Which author declined the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1926?

Sinclair Lewis declined the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction associated with his novel Arrowsmith. The award was for the 1925 prize year, but the decision and refusal became public in 1926.

Lewis objected to the prize’s assumptions about literary respectability and American life. In his refusal, he argued that writers should not be judged by whether their work conformed to the expectations of a conservative literary establishment. Arrowsmith, written with scientific detail and medical insight, follows Martin Arrowsmith, a physician struggling to preserve his commitment to research while facing commercial and institutional pressures.

The episode is often confused with later Pulitzer controversies involving authors such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner, but none of those writers declined the Fiction prize in 1926. The 1926 award listing identifies Arrowsmith as the winning work and records Lewis’s refusal.

Lewis later won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1930 for Babbitt, although he again criticized the culture surrounding literary awards. He became the first American author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1930.