Since the Nobel Prizes were instituted, 106 individuals have won the Nobel Prize in Literature on 102 occasions. It was shared four times.
The youngest Literature Laureate is Rudyard Kipling, best known for The Jungle Book, who was 42 years old when he was awarded the Literature Prize in 1907. The Laureate till date is Doris Lessing, who was 88 when she was awarded the Prize in 2007. Twelve women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, with Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf being the first in 1909.
Two people have declined the Nobel Prize in Literature. Boris Pasternak (1958) "Accepted first, later caused by the authorities of his country (Soviet Union) to decline the Prize". Jean Paul Sartre (1964) declined the prize because he had consistently declined all official honours.
But there have been many others, quite well-known, who did not win the Literature Nobel. There are some "lists" on the Internet which mention just 10. This one lists 20, and the ones who were nominated by still didn't win are marked by *.
- Anton Chekhov *
- Bertolt Brecht *
- Emile Zola
- Henrik Ibsen *
- Herbert Spencer *
- HG Wells *
- James Joyce
- Jorge Luis Borges
- Joseph Conrad *
- Leo Tolstoy *
- Marcel Proust *
- Mark Twain *
- Maxim Gorki *
- Robert Lee Frost
- Sean O'Casey *
- Thomas Hardy *
- Virginia Woolf *
- Vladimir Nabokov
- W Somerset Maugham *
- WH Auden
