A hundred and thirty years ago, on 27 November 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Bernhard Nobel signed his last will. This ensured that the bulk of his estate would be used to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded without distinction of nationality. The Nobel Prizes, given by the Swedish Academy, are considered among the most prestigious in the world.

One of the prizes is the Nobel Prize in Literature, given to the person who, in Nobel’s own words, “produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction”. It has been awarded 117 times between 1901 and 2025. Occasionally, the prize has been shared between two individuals, and in some years, it was not awarded at all. The winners have included writers in 25 languages.

Here at Faded Page, we have works from a large number of Nobel Prize winners. These include American authors Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, UK author John Galsworthy and French author Roger Martin du Gard.

Notably, there are very few female winners, only 18 out of 122. We do have a representative of this small but august group, Charlotte Löwensköld by Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf, translated by Velma Swanston Howard.

Help us add more public domain books for prize-winning authors by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For more information, please visit our companion site at Distributed Proofreaders Canada.