The 1957 Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury declared the year to be “a poor one for the American novel” and declined to name any “serious contenders” for the prize. However, if any award was to be given, they suggested Elizabeth Spencer’s third novel, The Voice at the Back Door (part of her “Mississippi Cycle”), a novel about a local sheriff’s campaign to investigate corruption and racial violence in the American South, in particular a small town’s execution of black citizens; as well as Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah, a novel about Irish Catholic politicians in Boston (Edwin O’Connor would later win the Pulitzer Prize in 1962 for The Edge of Sadness). Why was Elizabeth Spencer snubbed for the prize? According to The Paris Review and The New York Times “Some critics have said that Ms. Spencer’s candor about virulent segregationist racism was the reason.” Perhaps the board saw a potential political headache if they highlighted a vocal anti-segregationist in the tumultuous age of Brown vs Board of Education, the murder of Emmett Till, and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. Elizabeth Spencer (1921-2019) was a celebrated Southern writer from Carrollton, Mississippi. She won a variety of awards including the O. Henry Award and a Guggenheim among many others. She was friends with many prominent Southern writers, such as Robert Penn Warren, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote and others. Interestingly enough, she was a distant relative of the late Arizona Senator, John McCain. Apparently, she didn’t learn how close she came to winning the Pulitzer Prize until entering her seventies. She died in 2019 at the age of 98.
Regarding the maelstrom surrounding the fiction jury’s decision in 1957, the Administrator for the Pulitzer Prizes, John Hohenberg, later wrote: “During my time as administrator, fiction had nearly always been a problem for most Pulitzer Prize juries and the 1957 report was no exception.” He further commented, “Had there been the slightest hope for an American novel worthy of the Pulitzer Prize that year, Messrs. Brown and Baker would have identified it. Of that I was sure.” Was the Pulitzer board a coward in this critical moment of racial strife In 2022, Library of America published a collection of Elizabeth Spencer’s “Novels & Stories” with an introductory essay by Dr. Michael Gorra (an English Professor at Smith College). In it, he further explores this question of Spencer’s Pulitzer snub and he offers an impassioned defense of The Voice at the Back Door. Dr. Gorra’s essay comes highly recommended from me and has inspired me to one day pick up The Voice at the Back Door.
The 1957 Fiction Jury consisted of recurring jury member Carlos Baker, a Princeton Professor and noted Hemingway biographer; and Francis Brown, a writer who served as editor of The New York Times Book Review from 1949 to 1971. John Hohenberg was delighted when he secured these two experts for the jury in 1957.
Additionally in 1957, the Pulitzer Advisory Board issued a rare Special Citation in honor of Kenneth Roberts (1885-1957), a journalist-turned-celebrated historical novelist whose books primarily examined his native state of Maine. The Special Citation was intended to acknowledge Mr. Roberts’s life work, rather than awarding him the Pulitzer Prize for his most recently published novel. The Pulitzer Advisory Board said it was: “For his historical novels which have long contributed to the creation of greater interest in our early American history.” Tragically, Mr. Roberts died a mere few months later.