Yeats did not know that 1923, the year of his Nobel prize, did not mark his first nomination but his seventh
WB Yeats: his Nobel citation praised him “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation”. Photograph: George Rinhart/Getty ImagesOn November 14th, 1923, late at night, WB Yeats received a telephone call at his home, 82 Merrion Square, Dublin. The caller was Bertie Smyllie, editor of The Irish Times, bringing the first report that Yeats had won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In attempts towards conciliation, Yeats thanked “the English committees” for nominating him, and paid tribute to Thomas Mann as the other leading contender. He was wrong on both fronts. Mann was first nominated in 1924 and Yeats was not nominated by an English committee but instead by a member of the Swedish Academy.
The names that don’t appear are remarkable: James Joyce is a famous non-winner and the archive shows also that he was never even nominated. Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad and Franz Kafka never figured among the nominees either. Thomas Hardy received 25 nominations, over 12 different years between 1910 and 1927, and never won. Henrik Ibsen was nominated unsuccessfully three times, Leo Tolstoy 19 times and in three of those instances for the Peace Prize.
All changed – for Yeats and Ireland – a year later. The Nobel citation for Yeats, read to him in Stockholm on December 10th, 1923, praised him “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation”.
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