Pulitzer Prize for Biography

The Pulitzer Prize for Biography is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award honors "a distinguished and appropriately documented biography by an American author."^[1] Award winners received $15,000 USD.^[1]

From 1917 to 2022, this prize was known as the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and was awarded to a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir^[2] by an American author or co-authors, published during the preceding calendar year. It is one of the original Pulitzers. The program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year.^[3]

Recipients

In its first 97 years to 2013, the Biography Pulitzer was awarded 97 times. Two were given in 1938, and none in 1962.^[4]

1910s-1940s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners, 1917-1949^[2]

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
1917	Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott, assisted by Florence Howe Hall	Julia Ward Howe
1918	William Cabell Bruce	Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed
1919	Henry Adams	The Education of Henry Adams
1920	Albert J. Beveridge	The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols.
1921	Edward Bok	The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After
1922	Hamlin Garland	A Daughter of the Middle Border
1923	Burton J. Hendrick	The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page
1924	Michael I. Pupin	From Immigrant to Inventor
1925	M. A. De Wolfe Howe	Barrett Wendell and His Letters
1926	Harvey Cushing	The Life of Sir William Osler, 2 vols.
1927	Emory Holloway	Whitman
1928	Charles Edward Russell	The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas
1929	Burton J. Hendrick	The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page
1930	Marquis James	The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston
1931	Henry James	Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University, 1869–1901
1932	Henry F. Pringle	Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography
1933	Allan Nevins	Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage
1934	Tyler Dennett	John Hay
1935	Douglas S. Freeman	R. E. Lee
1936	Ralph Barton Perry	The Thought and Character of William James
1937	Allan Nevins	Hamilton Fish
1938	Marquis James	Andrew Jackson, 2 vols.
	Odell Shepard	Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott
1939	Carl Van Doren	Benjamin Franklin
1940	Ray Stannard Baker	Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters. Vols. VII and VIII
1941	Ola Elizabeth Winslow	Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: a biography
1942	Forrest Wilson	Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe
1943	Samuel Eliot Morison	Admiral of the Ocean Sea
1944	Carleton Mabee	The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse	[5]
1945	Russel Blaine Nye	George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel
1946	Linnie Marsh Wolfe	Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir
1947	William Allen White	The Autobiography of William Allen White
1948	Margaret Clapp	Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow
1949	Robert E. Sherwood	Roosevelt and Hopkins

1950s-1970s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners, 1950-1979^[2]

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
1950	Samuel Flagg Bemis	John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy
1951	Margaret Louise Coit	John C. Calhoun: American Portrait
1952	Merlo J. Pusey	Charles Evans Hughes
1953	David J. Mays	Edmund Pendleton 1721–1803
1954	Charles A. Lindbergh	The Spirit of St. Louis
1955	William S. White	The Taft Story
1956	Talbot Faulkner Hamlin	Benjamin Henry Latrobe
1957	John F. Kennedy	Profiles in Courage	[6]
1958	Douglas Southall Freeman with John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth	George Washington, vols. I-VII
1959	Arthur Walworth	Woodrow Wilson, American Prophet
1960	Samuel Eliot Morison	John Paul Jones
1961	David Donald	Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War
1962	No award presented[7]
1963	Leon Edel	Henry James
1964	Walter Jackson Bate	John Keats
1965	Ernest Samuels	Henry Adams, 3 vols.
1966	Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.	A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House	[8]
1967	Justin Kaplan	Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain	[9]
1968	George F. Kennan	Memoirs
1969	Benjamin Lawrence Reid	The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends
1970	Thomas Harry Williams	Huey Long	[10]
1971	Lawrance Thompson	Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915–1938,
1972	Joseph P. Lash	Eleanor and Franklin
1973	W. A. Swanberg	Luce and His Empire
1974	Louis Sheaffer	O'Neill, Son and Artist
1975	Robert Caro	The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York	[11]
1976	R. W. B. Lewis	Edith Wharton: A Biography
1977	John E. Mack	A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence
1978	Walter Jackson Bate	Samuel Johnson
1979	Leonard Baker	Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews

1980s

Entries from this point on include the finalists listed after the winner for each year.

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 1980-1989^[2]

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1980	Edmund Morris	The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt	Winner
	Ernest Samuels	Bernard Berenson, The Making of a Connoisseur	Finalist
	Meryle Secrest	Being Bernard Berenson	Finalist
	Geoffrey Wolff	The Duke of Deception	Finalist
1981	Robert K. Massie	Peter the Great: His Life and World	Winner	[12][13]
	Justin Kaplan	Walt Whitman: A Life	Finalist
	Ronald Steel	Walter Lippmann and the American Century	Finalist
1982	William S. McFeely	Grant: A Biography	Winner	[14]
	Gay Wilson Allen	Waldo Emerson	Finalist
	David McCullough	Mornings on Horseback	Finalist
1983	Russell Baker	Growing Up	Winner	[15]
	Ted Morgan	Churchill: Young Man in a Hurry, 1874–1915	Finalist
	Richard Norton Smith	Thomas E. Dewey and His Times	Finalist
1984	Louis R. Harlan	Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915	Winner
	Fred Kaplan	Thomas Carlyle: A Biography	Finalist
	Kenneth Manning	Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just	Finalist
1985	Kenneth Silverman	The Life and Times of Cotton Mather	Winner	[16]
	Howard M. Feinstein	Becoming William James	Finalist
	Michael Mott	The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton	Finalist	[17]
1986	Elizabeth Frank	Louise Bogan: A Portrait	Winner
	John Hope Franklin	George Washington Williams: A Biography	Finalist
	Frida Scheps Weinstein	A Hidden Childhood: A Jewish Girl's Sanctuary in a French Convent, 1942–1945	Finalist
1987	David J. Garrow	Bearing The Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference	Winner
	Joseph Frank	Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860–1865	Finalist
	Leonard L. Richards	The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams	Finalist
	A.M. Sperber	Murrow: His Life and Times	Finalist
1988	David Herbert Donald	Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe	Winner
	Kenneth S. Lynn	Hemingway	Finalist
	John Owen McCormick	George Santayana: A Biography	Finalist
1989	Richard Ellmann	Oscar Wilde	Winner
	Peter Gay	Freud: A Life for Our Time	Finalist
	Arnold Rampersad	The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II, 1941–1967: I Dream a World	Finalist	[18]
	Neil Sheehan	A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam	Finalist

1990s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 1990-1999^[2]

Year	Author(s)	Title	Result	Ref.
1990	Sebastian de Grazia	Machiavelli in Hell	Winner
	Jill Ker Conway	The Road from Coorain	Finalist
	Reynolds Price	Clear Pictures: First Loves, First Guides	Finalist
	Geoffrey C. Ward	A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt	Finalist
1991	Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith	Jackson Pollock: An American Saga	Winner	[19]
	Patricia O'Toole	The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends 1880–1918	Finalist
	Joseph Frazier Wall	Alfred I. Du Pont: The Man and His Family	Finalist
1992	Lewis B. Puller	Fortunate Son: The Autobiography of Lewis B. Puller Jr.	Winner
	William S. McFeely	Frederick Douglass	Finalist
	Michael Shelden	Orwell: The Authorized Biography	Finalist
1993	David McCullough	Truman	Winner	[20]
	James Gleick	Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman	Finalist
	Walter Isaacson	Kissinger: A Biography	Finalist
1994	David Levering Lewis	W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919	Winner	[21]
	Deborah Baker	In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding	Finalist
	Edmund White	Genet: A Biography	Finalist
1995	Joan D. Hedrick	Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life	Winner
	Roger K. Newman	Hugo Black: A Biography	Finalist
	Stacy Schiff	Saint-Exupery: A Biography	Finalist	[22]
1996	Jack Miles	God: A Biography	Winner
	John Loughery	John Sloan: Painter and Rebel	Finalist
	Maynard Solomon	Mozart: A Life	Finalist	[23]
1997	Frank McCourt	Angela's Ashes: A Memoir	Winner
	Kim Barnes	In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country	Finalist
	Hershel Parker	Herman Melville: A Biography, Volume 1, 1819–1851	Finalist
1998	Katharine Graham	Personal History	Winner	[24][25]
	James H. Jones	Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public-Private Life	Finalist
	Sam Tanenhaus	Whittaker Chambers: A Biography	Finalist
1999	A. Scott Berg	Lindbergh	Winner	[26][27]
	Francine du Plessix Gray	At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life	Finalist
	Sylvia Nasar	A Beautiful Mind	Finalist

2000s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 2000-2009^[2]

Year	Author(s)	Title	Result
2000	Stacy Schiff	Vera, Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov	Winner	[22]
	Bobbie Ann Mason	Clear Springs: A Memoir	Finalist
	Dava Sobel	Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love	Finalist
2001	David Levering Lewis	W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963	Winner	[28]
	H.W. Brands	The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin	Finalist
	Christoph Wolff	Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician	Finalist
2002	David McCullough	John Adams	Winner	[20]
	Jimmy Carter	An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood	Finalist
	Jean Edward Smith	Grant	Finalist	[29]
2003	Robert Caro	Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson	Winner
	Nicholas Dawidoff	The Fly Swatter: A Portrait of an Exceptional Character	Finalist
	Lewis Lockwood	Beethoven: The Music and the Life	Finalist
2004	William Taubman	Khrushchev: The Man and His Era	Winner
	James Gleick	Isaac Newton	Finalist
	Hayden Herrera	Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work	Finalist
2005	Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan	de Kooning: An American Master	Winner
	Stephen Greenblatt	Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare	Finalist
	William Souder	Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America	Finalist
2006	Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin	American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer	Winner
	Joan Didion	The Year of Magical Thinking	Finalist
	Megan Marshall	The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism	Finalist	[30]
2007	Debby Applegate	The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher	Winner
	Arthur H. Cash	John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty	Finalist	[31]
	David Nasaw	Andrew Carnegie	Finalist
2008	John Matteson	Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father	Winner
	Martin Duberman	The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein	Finalist
	Zachary Leader	The Life of Kingsley Amis	Finalist
2009	Jon Meacham	American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House	Winner	[32][33]
	H.W. Brands	Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt	Finalist
	Steve Coll	The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century	Finalist

2010s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 2010-2019^[2]

Year	Author(s)	Title	Result	Ref.
2010	T. J. Stiles	The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt	Winner	[34]
	Blake Bailey	Cheever: A Life	Finalist
	John Milton Cooper, Jr.	Woodrow Wilson: A Biography	Finalist
2011	Ron Chernow	Washington: A Life	Winner	[35][36]
	Alan Brinkley	The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century	Finalist
	Michael O'Brien	Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon	Finalist
2012	John Lewis Gaddis	George F. Kennan: An American Life	Winner	[37][38]
	Mary Gabriel	Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution	Finalist	[38]
	Manning Marable	Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention	Finalist	[38]
2013	Tom Reiss	The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo	Winner	[39]
	Michael Gorra	Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece	Finalist	[39]
	David Nasaw	The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy	Finalist	[39]
2014	Megan Marshall	Margaret Fuller: A New American Life	Winner	[40][41]
	Leo Damrosch	Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World	Finalist
	Jonathan Sperber	Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life	Finalist
2015	David I. Kertzer	The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe	Winner	[42][43]
	Thomas Brothers	Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism	Finalist
	Stephen Kotkin	Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928	Finalist
2016	William Finnegan	Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life	Winner	[44][45]
	Elizabeth Alexander	The Light of the World: A Memoir	Finalist
	T. J. Stiles	Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America	Finalist
2017	Hisham Matar	The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between	Winner	[46][47]
	Susan Faludi	In the Darkroom	Finalist
	Paul Kalanithi	When Breath Becomes Air	Finalist
2018	Caroline Fraser	Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder	Winner	[48][49]
	John A. Farrell	Richard Nixon: The Life	Finalist	[48]
	Kay Redfield Jamison	Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character	Finalist	[48]
2019	Jeffrey C. Stewart	The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke	Winner	[50][51]
	Max Boot	The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam	Finalist	[50]
	Caroline Weber	Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris	Finalist	[50]

2020s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 2020-present^[2]

Year	Author(s)	Work	Result	Ref
2020	Benjamin Moser	Sontag: Her Life and Work	Winner	[52][53][54]
	George Packer	Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century	Finalist	[52]
	Deirdre Bair	Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me	Finalist	[52]
2021	Les Payne and Tamara Payne	The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X	Winner	[55][56][57]
	Heather Clark	Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath	Finalist	[55]
	Amy Stanley	Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World	Finalist	[55]
2022	Winfred Rembert and Erin I. Kelly	Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South	Winner	[58][59][60]
	Richard Zenith	Pessoa: A Biography	Finalist	[58]
	Janice P. Nimura	The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine	Finalist	[58]
2023	Beverly Gage	G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century	Winner	[61][62]
	Jennifer Homans	Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century	Finalist	[61]
	Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa	His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice	Finalist	[61]
2024	Jonathan Eig	King: A Life	Winner	[63][64]
	Ilyon Woo	Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom	Winner	[63]
	Tracy Daugherty	Larry McMurtry: A Life	Finalist	[63]
2025	Jason Roberts	Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life	Winner
	David Greenberg	John Lewis: A Life	Finalist
	Amy Reading	The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker	Finalist

Repeat winners

Ten people have won the Pulitzer for Biography or Autobiography twice:

• Burton J. Hendrick, 1923, 1929
• Allan Nevins, 1933, 1937
• Marquis James, 1930, 1938
• Douglas S. Freeman, 1935, 1958
• Samuel Eliot Morison, 1943, 1960
• Walter Jackson Bate, 1964, 1978
• David Herbert Donald, 1961, 1988
• David Levering Lewis, 1994, 2001
• David McCullough, 1993, 2002
• Robert Caro, 1975, 2003

W. A. Swanberg was selected by the Pulitzer board in 1962 and 1973; however, the trustees of Columbia University (then responsible for conferral of the awards) overturned the proposed 1962 prize for Citizen Hearst.^[7]

See also

• Biography portal

• Pulitzer Prize for History