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The Nobel Prize winners in literature

Chapter 2: PREFACE
By Annie Russell Marble
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About This Book

A survey of recipients of the Nobel literary prize, offering concise biographies, critical assessments of major works, and selective bibliographies for each laureate up to the author's time. The volume opens with an account of Alfred Nobel and the conditions of his bequest, then proceeds through chapters that group poets, novelists, dramatists, and scholars, discussing characteristic styles and representative works. Illustrations, a chronological list of laureates, and a bibliography provide reference support, and the commentary is presented as an invitation to further reading rather than an exhaustive treatment of any single author.

TO

PAUL AND ANNA

PREFACE

These studies of Nobel Prize Winners in Literature have been the result of research for several years and lectures upon the subject in University Extension courses, before college clubs and other groups. The vast scope of the subject suggests temerity in one who attempts to treat it in such limited space. The writer realizes the inadequacy of the book and possible conflicting statements because of diverse authorities that have been consulted. After careful “siftings,” it is offered as an incentive to further study, as a roadmap to many paths of literary research. Biographical data and brief criticism of the authors’ works are followed by a bibliography which is suggestive rather than exhaustive.

The writer of these chapters has been, in large measure, the recorder of research by many individuals and educational institutions, with personal deductions from wide reading. Among many books that have been stimulating are Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century by Georg Brandes, Studies from Ten Literatures by Ernest Boyd, books upon the drama and translations by John Garrett Underhill, Ludwig Lewisohn and Barrett H. Clark, and studies of Knut Hamsun by Josef Wiehr and Hanna Arstrup Larsen. Other specific books of interpretation are emphasized in text and footnotes, as well as in bibliography.

Gratitude that defies fitting words would be here expressed to Miss Anna C. Reque of the Bureau of Information of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, to the Svenska Akademien Nobelinstitut of Stockholm, to Mrs. Velma Swanston Howard, Miss Svea Boson and Thekla E. Hodge for translations, to Mr. R. F. Sharp of the British Museum, to Eugen Diederichs Verlag in Jerla, to The Danish National Library, Copenhagen, to Prof. Josef Wiehr, Prof. Kuno Francke, Francis Rooney, Esq., to Mr. Theodore Sutro, Mr. Rupert Hughes, Miss Harriet C. Marble, and to librarians of the Widener Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Miss Grace W. Wood, Mrs. Helen Abbott Beals, and to librarians of the Widener Library, Cambridge, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Free Public Library of Worcester and many other sources of encouragement and coöperation.

Appreciation of permission to quote extracts from printed works and to use illustrations is acknowledged to Sir Edmund Gosse, Mr. Rudyard Kipling and his agents, A. P. Watt & Son, to editors of The Atlantic Monthly, The Bookman, The Edinburgh Review, and the publishing houses of American-Scandinavian Foundation, D. Appleton & Co., Boni & Liveright, The Century Co., Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc., Doubleday, Page & Company, Ginn and Company, Henry Holt and Company, Houghton Mifflin Company, B. W. Huebsch, Inc., Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Little, Brown & Company, J. B. Lippincott Company, Longmans, Green & Co., The Macmillan Company, Oxford University Press, American Branch, The Pilgrim Press, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Thomas Seltzer, Inc., Leonard Scott Publication Company, Herman Struck, W. P. Trumbauer, The University of Pennsylvania and Yale University Press.

Annie Russell Marble

Worcester, Massachusetts,
September, 1925