Top 10 Forgotten Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novels

You would think winning a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction would ensure an enduring literary legacy. Not always – a number of Pulitzer-winning books are out-of-print. With this year’s announcement later today, AbeBooks.com has compiled a list of forgotten winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel as the award was known prior to 1948.

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, or Novel, has been awarded annually, save a few vacant years, since 1918. It’s been claimed by many legends, including Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, John Updike, and John Steinbeck. However, let’s remember some of the others. Our list of 10 forgotten Pulitzer Prize-winning novels fading into obscurity is based upon sales and searches on AbeBooks.com over the past 12 months.

1. Guard of Honor

James Gould Cozzens

First published 1948
Highest price on AbeBooks - $850

Cozzens became immensely popular in the 1950s and was nominated for a second Pulitzer for By Love Possessed.  However his popularity waned in 1957 when he was branded as an elitist after being interviewed by Time Magazine.  Statements like “I can't read 10 pages of Steinbeck without throwing up,” didn’t win him any friends. Guard of Honor takes place over three days in 1943 at a Florida Airbase featuring a new hapless commander.

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2. Advise and Consent

Allen Drury

First published 1959/Out-of-print
Highest price on AbeBooks - $1,500

Drury won the Pulitzer with his first novel, Advise and Consent, and followed it with a number of sequels.  Saturday Review said of Advise and Consent in August 1959 that “It may be a long time before a better (novel) comes along.”  One year later, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was published. Advise and Consent is a political novel which explores the reaction to a former Communist Party member being appointed Secretary of State.  

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3. Journey in the Dark

Martin Flavin

First published 1943/Out-of-print
Highest price on AbeBooks - $850

Through the 1920s and ‘30s, Flavin was a Broadway playwright with much influence.  The most successful of his novels was Journey in the Dark, his fifth and last work of fiction.  The book is a story of a boy who grew up in a poor family and his adventures in love and business.

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4. Now in November

Josephine Winslow Johnson

First published 1934
Highest price on AbeBooks - $125

Johnson won the Pulitzer with her first novel at the age of 24.  She continued to win awards for some of her short stories but, after marrying in 1942, her literary output slowed considerably. Now in November is written as a social protest in the voice of the second of three daughters growing up in an impoverished depression era farming family.

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5. The Able McLaughlins

Margaret Wilson

First published 1923
Highest price on AbeBooks - $125

Margaret Wilson moved to England with her husband G.D. Turner almost immediately after publishing The Able McLaughlins. She continued to write until 1937 as an expat.  This neglected novel tells the story of Wully McLaughlin coming home from the Civil War to find his sweetheart pregnant with another man’s child.

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6. Honey in the Horn

H.L. Davis

First published 1935
Highest price on AbeBooks - $3,500

Davis was awarded a Guggenheim grant in 1932 which enabled him to spend two years in Jalisco, Mexico, writing Honey in the Horn.   It is a coming-of-age tale about eastern Oregon pioneer life set in the early 20th century.  This book also received the Harper Prize for best debut novel.  Davis did not go to New York to receive the Pulitzer in person, saying he did not want to put himself on exhibition.

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7. The Keepers of the House

Shirley Ann Grau

First published 1964
Highest price on AbeBooks - $200

This novel is set in rural Alabama and covers seven generations of the Howland family that lived in the same house and built a community around themselves. As such, it is a metaphor for the long-established families of the Deep South, their encounters with changing values and norms, and the hypocrisy of racism. 

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8. Lamb in His Bosom

Caroline Miller

First published 1933
Highest price on AbeBooks - $750

Lamb in His Bosom was a one-hit wonder, with Miller’s second and last novel falling out-of-print shortly after it was published in 1944.  Lamb in His Bosom became an immediate bestseller because it looked at the old south from the perspective of the poor, who lived in the Georgia backwoods, rather than the rich plantation and slave owners.

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9. His Family

Ernest Poole

First published 1917
Highest price on AbeBooks - $500

The first Pulitzer winner is often overshadowed by subsequent victories of Booth Tarkington (twice) and Edith Wharton.  His Family was out-of-print from the mid-1920s to 1970 and again from the late ‘70s until the turn of the century.  The novel tells the story of a middle class family in 1910s’ New York and how they deal with a changing society. His Family was republished last year.

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10. Martin Dressler

Steven Millhauser

First published 1997
Highest price on AbeBooks - $1,950

It was only published 12 years ago so should it be on this list? Well, let’s say it deserves a mention because no-one’s buying it. Millhauser isn’t really forgotten, as his Dangerous Laughter was named one of the 10 best books of 2008 by the New York Times, but other recent Pulitzer winners (Michael Chabon, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy) continue to be regularly lauded by the press.  Martin Dressler follows the exploits of a young entrepreneur chasing the American Dream in New York.

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• Read AbeBooks exclusive interview with Jared Diamond, author of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction winner, Guns, Germs and Steel.