No prize was awarded in 1917. In 1948 the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel was replaced with the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

• 1918: His Family by Ernest Poole
• 1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
• 1920: no award given
• 1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• 1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
• 1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather
• 1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson
• 1925: So Big by Edna Ferber
• 1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
• 1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield
• 1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
• 1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin
• 1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge
• 1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
• 1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• 1933: The Store by T. S. Stribling
• 1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller
• 1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson
• 1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis
• 1937: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• 1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand
• 1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
• 1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• 1941: no award given
• 1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow
• 1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
• 1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
• 1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
• 1946: no award given
• 1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren