Novels published during the year 1916 were the first batch of books eligible to be considered for the Pulitzer Prize, however Columbia University and the Pulitzer Advisory Board were not quite ready yet to manage the whole process. In the words of future Pulitzer Prize Administrator John Hohenberg, the early Pulitzer Prizes were “a frail craft of many masters.” At this time, Columbia’s Secretary and Provost, Frank Fackenthal, was the de facto administrator of the prizes, and he often found himself serving as the liaison between Columbia’s Board of Trustees, the Pulitzer Advisory Board, and the various juries during the fledgling years of the prize. Fackenthal served in a critical role for many years building up the Pulitzer Prizes and he was later given a special Pulitzer scroll in 1948 for his service to the Pulitzer Prizes.
Indeed Frank Fackenthal established many of the Pulitzer traditions that remain in effect today. Per John Hohenberg, “It was Fackenthal, more than anyone else, who enforced the view that the university should be reserved in publicizing the awards, commenting on them, and answering critics. He believed that Columbia should administer the prizes and award them annually through its Trustees, but should not undertake to discuss, debate, or defend them. That, he held, was proper public policy… At first, the muted publicity was a distinct handicap in making the Pulitzer Prizes familiar to the nation at large. But it has long since ceased to have any substantial effect on the public’s reception of the awards.”
The founding Pulitzer Prize jury members for “The Novel” category were apparently appointed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (an organization which informally began in 1904 and was later congressionally incorporated in 1913) as well as the National Institute of Arts and Letters (per The New York Times) under the direction of Chancellor William M. Sloane. According to John Hohenberg, the inaugural Novel Jury included: Professor William Lyon Phelps of Yale, Robert Grant (a Boston novelist), and William Morton Payne (former literary editor of the Chicago Daily News). They received a mere six submissions in 1917 –one was ineligible, five were declined, and one was described as halfway decent. Under these circumstances, the jury recommended against awarding a Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1917 and the Pulitzer Board at Columbia agreed. At the time, the Pulitzer Board consisted of ten men, primarily editors of various newspapers, such as the Associated Press, Boston Globe, and the New York World. They suggested better advertisement was needed in the future (however, as far as advertisement goes, I did locate several publicity announcements for the Pulitzer Prizes in the archives of The New York Times between 1916-1917).
At any rate, upon further reflection, John Hohenberg later noted that 1916-1917 was not a “vintage year for the American novel” because the United States was too “encrusted with the Victorian prejudices of the age.” However, the jury still might have done well to consider a struggling young novelist, Sherwood Anderson, and his debut novel Windy McPherson’s Son, or William Dean Howell’s The Leatherwood God, or even Ellen Glasgow’s Life and Gabriella (though Glasgow would later win a Pulitzer Prize in 1942 for her novel In This Our Life). However, having never read either of these three novels, I cannot make an accurate judgment.
This first year of the Pulitzer Prizes in 1917 came on the heels of President Woodrow Wilson’s declaration of war against Germany (which came in the spring). At Columbia, a staunch pro-war mania had infected the administration as pushed by controversial university president Nicholas Murray Butler who cracked down on dissent by revoking academic freedom and threatening any faculty member who was not “with whole heart and mind and strength committed to fight with us to make the world safe for democracy.” In the ensuing fallout, several faculty members were dismissed for being insufficiently loyal. It was quite a scandal in American higher education. With this in mind, only four members of the Pulitzer Advisory Board attended the inaugural meeting with President Butler in the Trustees Room. Most juries were reticent to submit recommendations for the prizes, and those who did sought to clearly amplify the patriotic, jingoistic tenor of the time.
In 1917, the Pulitzer Board quietly accepted all recommendations of other juries and approved paying the cost of $50 to each jury member who was not a member of the Columbia faculty, and they adjourned their session after a mere two hours. Columbia’s Board of Trustees then simply approved the awards matter-of-factly with the first prizes being granted at Commencement that year on June 6, 1917 with little fanfare. This was to set a similar pattern which would be followed over the ensuing war years in 1918 and 1919. “Outside the garish spotlight of public cynosure, and relatively free of critical inspection, the system for determining the awards was molded into a reasonably efficient operation” according to John Hohenberg. However, President Butler was quickly forced to abandon some of his pet ideas, like the notion that the Pulitzer Board and The American Academy of Arts and Letters could continue to jointly handling the nominations and designations of jurors for the letters and drama prizes. Soon, both the juries and the Advisory Board would require expansion.