The early Pulitzer Prizes did not have a strictly formal selection process for the award which occasionally led to confusion and turmoil behind the scenes. For example, consider the unique cases of 1919 and 1920. In 1919, when the Pulitzer Novel Jury discussed which novel to nominate for the prize, they hastily exchanged telegrams and letters before initially reaching a “reluctant” conclusion that no novel was deserving of the award, however shortly before the announcement was released, one of the jury members (William Lyon Phelps) wrote to the Advisory Board asking if it was too late to nominate Booth Tarkington’s book. The advisory board quickly agreed by telegram, deciding that it was better to grant at least one award in 1919 rather than none at all. Thus The Magnificent Ambersons proved victorious in 1919.
Flash forward to the following year. In 1920, one new juror was added to the Novel Jury after William Morton Payne died. The new juror was 39-year old, Iowa-born Stuart Pratt Sherman, a noted literary critic best known for his public debate on the cusp of World War I with H.L. Mencken about the legacy of Nietzsche (Mencken was the leading American defender of Nietzsche at the time). According to W.J. Stuckey in his book The Pulitzer Prize Novels, one of the other jurors in 1920 was Robert Grant, a novelist of “limited” fictional talent who had abandoned a literary career by this time and was serving as a judge in Massachusetts. Per former Pulitzer Prize Administrator John Hohenberg, Grant served as chairman of the jury in 1920, and he was joined by Stuart Pratt Sherman and returning juror William Lyon Phelps.
At any rate, having a new voice in the room (Stuart Pratt Sherman) led to great confusion regarding Mr. Pulitzer’s revised estate which had initially instructed the jury to distribute one award based on a novel that represents the “whole atmosphere of American life…” but President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University subtly changed this terminology to award the prize such that it reflects the “wholesome atmosphere of American life…” The latter change was made to transform the Pulitzer Prize into more of an ethical award rather than a comprehensive celebration of artistic excellence. In the words of critic John K. Hutchens, the nuances between “whole” and “wholesome” were akin to the differences between Theodore Dreiser and Booth Tarkington. In 1920, the Jury (particularly Stuart P. Sherman) initially sought to grant the award to Joseph Hergesheimer for Java Head but ultimately decided it was not sufficiently “wholesome.” Thus, the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel was not awarded in 1920. Sadly, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio was overlooked this year.
The “whole” versus “wholesome” controversy would later be dropped following Sinclair Lewis’s very public controversy over his refusal to accept a Pulitzer Prize for his novel Arrowsmith.
Additionally, to set the scene, these were difficult years in American history. As John Hohenberg notes, the mid-Victorian attitude that pervaded elite culture in America, quickly faded to cynicism and ugliness following the end of World War I. “Many of the ideals and standards that had seemed so immutable to both Butler [President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University] and Pulitzer [Joseph Pulitzer, the patron of the Pulitzer Prizes], and which were imbedded within the Plan of the Award, came under severe attack.”
“With the coming of a shattering national revulsion to the American wartime experience, the public mood of exaltation and adventure was transformed with dramatic suddenness into a dour, suspicious cynicism. Gone was the soaring idealism, the feeling of glory, and the vibrant patriotism that Woodrow Wilson had aroused in those who believed in America’s sense of mission in the world.” Now, a different and far more volatile America emerged –one which failed to approve the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, and which elected Warren G. Harding to the presidency under a promised return to normalcy, amidst an American retreat into isolationism, dollar-chasing, and a reckless search for novelty. This was also a period of rising communist fears (as in the infamous “Palmer Raids”), brutal race riots (with the resurgent Ku Klux Klan), a puritanical push against alcohol leading to Prohibition, and a rising labor movement that was met with a violent, reactionary response. And to top it all off, a brief postwar recession gave birth to rampant stock market speculation. “The world of Joseph Pulitzer, who had been dead only about a decade, existed now only in the history books and the fading imagination of an older generation. it remained to be seen whether his prizes could change with the times.”
With grateful acknowledgement to John Hohenberg’s essential book entitled The Pulitzer Prizes.