The Nobel Prize in Literature (Swedish: Nobelpriset i litteratur) is awarded annually by the Swedish Academy to authors which, according to the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the benefactor of the prize, has produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction".^[1] It is one of the five Nobel Prizes which are awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine.^[2]

Every year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests regularly for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of literature academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel literature laureates, and the presidents of writers' organizations are all allowed to nominate a candidate. Nomination of oneself is not permitted.^[3] Despite the yearly invitations for nominations, there have been some years wherein the prize was not conferred due to particular reasons (1914, 1918, 1935) and due to the outbreak of World War II (1940–1943). Besides the prize has been delayed for a year seven times (1915, 1919, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1936, 1949).

Records of nominations are strictly kept secret for 50 years until they are made publicly available. Currently, the nominations submitted from 1901 to 1973 are available.^[4][5] Between those two years there have been 829 writers coming from different parts of the world nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, 70 of which were awarded the prize^[6] including Albert Schweitzer who was awarded by Nobel Peace Prize on 1953. 17 more writers from these nominees were awarded after 1973 including Elie Wiesel who was awarded by Nobel Peace Prize on 1986. Only 77 women had been nominated for the prize starting with Malwida von Meysenburg who was nominated once for the year 1901^[7] and 8 of them have been awarded after all. Only one literary society has been nominated, the Pali Text Society for the year 1916. Of the 829 revealed nominated writers, only the 1967-nominated Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko (born 1930), the 1969-nominated Finnish author Hannu Salama (born 1936) and the 1973-nominated Indian poet Indira Devi Dhanrajgir (born 1929) are currently living.

Though the following list consists of notable literary figures deemed worthy of the prize, there have been some celebrated writers who were not considered nor even nominated such as Anton Chekhov,^[8] Jules Verne, Robert Hugh Benson, Franz Kafka, Fernando Pessoa, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexander Blok, Marcel Proust, Joseph Conrad, Rainer Maria Rilke, Federico García Lorca, Lu Xun, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Antonio Machado, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Christopher Dawson, Virginia Woolf, C. S. Lewis, Simone Weil, Willa Cather, George Orwell, Galaktion Tabidze, Edith Hamilton, Richard Wright, Flannery O'Connor, Langston Hughes, Jack Kerouac, Nancy Mitford and Agatha Christie.^[9][10][11]