| A | B |
|---|
| 1918 His Family | Ernest Poole |
| 1919 The Magnificent Ambersons | Booth Tarkington |
| 1917, 1920,1941, 1946, 1954, 1957, 1964, 1971, 1974, 1977 | No Award |
| 1921 The Age of Innocence | Edith Wharton |
| 1922 Alice Adams | Booth Tarkington |
| 1923 One of Ours | Willa Cather |
| 1924 The Able McLaughlins | Margaret Wilson |
| 1925 So Big | Edna Ferber |
| 1926 Arrowsmith | Sinclair Lewis (declined) |
| 1927 Early Autumn | Louis Bromfield |
| 1928 The Bridge of San Luis Rey | Thornton Wilder |
| 1929 Scarlet Sister Mary | Julia Peterkin |
| 1930 Laughing Boy | Oliver LaFarge |
| 1931 Years of Grace | Margaret Ayer Barnes |
| 1932 The Good Earth | Pearl S. Buck |
| 1933 The Store | T. S. Stribling |
| 1934 Lamb in His Bosom | Caroline Miller |
| 1935 Now in November | Josephine Winslow Johnson |
| 1936 Honey in the Horn | Harold L. Davis |
| 1937 Gone with the Wind | Margaret Mitchell |
| 1938 The Late George Apley | John Phillips Marquand |
| 1939 The Yearling | Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings |
| 1940 The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck |
| 1942 In This Our Life | Ellen Glasgow |
| 1943 Dragon's Teeth | Upton Sinclair |
| 1944 Journey in the Dark | Martin Flavin |
| 1945 A Bell for Adano | John Hersey |
| 1947 All the King's Men | Robert Penn Warren |
| 1948 Tales of the South Pacific | James A. Michener |
| 1949 Guard of Honor | James Gould Cozzens |
| 1950 The Way West | A. B. Guthrie, Jr. |
| 1951 The Town | Conrad Richter |
| 1952 The Caine Mutiny | Herman Wouk |
| 1953 The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway |
| 1955 A Fable | William Faulkner |
| 1956 Andersonville | MacKinlay Kantor |
| 1958 A Death in the Family | James Agee |
| 1959 The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters | Robert Lewis Taylor |
| 1960 Advise and Consent | Allen Drury |
| 1961 To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee |
| 1962 The Edge of Sadness | Edwin O'Connor |
| 1963 The Reivers | William Faulkner |
| 1965 The Keepers of the House | Shirley Ann Grau |
| 1966 Collected Short Stories | Katherine Anne Porter |
| 1967 The Fixer | Bernard Malamud |
| 1968 The Confessions of Nat Turner | William Styron |
| 1969 House Made of Dawn | M. Scott Momaday |
| 1970 Collected Stories | Jean Stafford |
| 1972 Angle of Repose | Wallace Stegner |
| 1973 The Optimist's Daughter | Eudora Welty |
| 1975 The Killer Angels | Michael Shaara |
| 1976 Humboldt's Gift | Saul Bellow |
| 1978 Elbow Room | James alan McPherson |
| 1979 The Stories | John Cheever |
| 1980 The Executioner's Song | Norman Mailer |
| 1981 A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole |
| 1982 Rabbit Is Rich | John Updike |
| 1983 The Color Purple | Alice Walker |
| 1984 Ironweed | William Kennedy |
| 1985 Foreign Affairs | Alison Lurie |
| 1986 Lonesome Dove | Larry McMurtry |
| 1987 A Summons to Memphis | Peter Taylor |
| 1988 Beloved | Toni Morrison |
| 1989 Breathing Lessons | Anne Tyler |
| 1990 The Mambo King Plays Songs of Love | Oscar Hijuelo |
| 1991 Rabbit at Rest | John Updike |
| 1992 A Thousand Acres | Jane Smiley |
| 1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain | Robert Olen Butler |
| 1994 The Shipping News | E. Annie Proulx |
| 1995 Stone Diaries | Carol Shields |
| 1996 Independence Day | Richard Ford |
| 1997 Martin Dressler | Steven Millhauser |
| 1998 American Pastoral | Philip Roth |
| 1999 The Hours | Michael Cunningham |
| 2000 Interpreter of Maladies | Jhumpha Lahiri |
| 2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | Michael Chabon |
| 2002 Empire Falls | Richard Russo |
| 2003 Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides |
| 2004 The Known World | Edward P. Jones |
| 2005 Gilead | Marilynne Robinson |
| 2006 March | Geraldine Brooks |
| 2007 The Road | Cormac McCarthy |
