1924 Nobel Prize in Literature

Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont (1867-1925) wrote novels and short stories that was strongly influenced by naturalism. He is best known for Chłopi (1904-1909, The Peasants), a novel in four volumes that chronicles peasant life in Poland during the four seasons of the year, for which he specifically was awarded the Nobel prize. An earlier success was the novel Ziemia obiecana (The Promised Land, 1899).[2]

Wladislaw Reymont was nominated four times (1919, 1920, 1922 and 1924) before he was awarded in 1924.[3] Other nominated authors in 1924 included Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Guglielmo Ferrero, Thomas Hardy, Paul Ernst, Stefan Zeromski, Roberto Bracco, Paul Sabatier, Olav Duun, George Bernard Shaw (awarded in 1925), Grazia Deledda (awarded in 1926) and Thomas Mann (awarded in 1929).[4]

Official list of nominees and their nominators for the prize

No.	Nominee	Country	Genre(s)	Nominator(s)
1	Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)	United Kingdom	novel, short story, poetry, drama	Robert Eugen Zachrisson (1880–1937)
2	Thomas Mann (1875–1955)	Germany	novel, short story, drama, essays	Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946)
3	Władysław Reymont (1867–1925)	Poland	novel, short story	Anders Österling (1884–1981)

As no official award ceremony took place, Per Hallström, chairman of the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy, wrote a critical essay on Reymont in lieu of a presentation speech. In it he concluded:

To sum up, this epic novel is characterized by an art so grand, so sure, so powerful, that we may predict a lasting value and rank for it, not only within Polish literature but also within the whole of that branch of imaginative writing which has here been given a distinctive and monumental shape.[5]

• Presentation A critical essay by Per Hallström, chairman of the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy