The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel was replaced in 1948 with the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
- 1948 James A. Michener - Tales of the South Pacific
- 1949 James Gould Cozzens - Guard of Honor
- 1950 A. B. Guthrie, Jr - The Way West
- 1951 Conrad Richter - The Town
- 1952 Herman Wouk - The Caine Mutiny
- 1953 Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
- 1954 no award given
- 1955 William Faulkner - A Fable
- 1956 MacKinlay Kantor - Andersonville
- 1957 no award given
- 1958 James Agee - A Death In The Family
- 1959 Robert Lewis Taylor - The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
- 1960 Allen Drury - Advise and Consent
- 1961 Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
- 1962 Edwin O'Connor - The Edge of Sadness
- 1963 William Faulkner - The Reivers
- 1964 no award given
- 1965 Shirley Ann Grau - The Keepers Of The House
- 1966 Katherine Anne Porter - Collected Stories
- 1967 Bernard Malamud - The Fixer
- 1968 William Styron - The Confessions of Nat Turner Styron
- 1969 N. Scott Momaday - House Made of Dawn
- 1970 Jean Stafford - Collected Stories
- 1971 no award given
- 1972 Wallace Stegner - Angle of Repose
- 1973 Eudora Welty - The Optimists Daughter
- 1974 no award given1
- 1975 Michael Shaara - The Killer Angels
- 1976 Saul Bellow - Humboldt's Gift
- 1977 no award given
- 1978 James Alan McPherson - Elbow Room
- 1979 John Cheever - The Stories of John Cheever
- 1980 Norman Mailer - The Executioner's Song
- 1981 John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
- 1982 John Updike - Rabbit Is Rich
- 1983 Alice Walker - The Color Purple
- 1984 William Kennedy - Ironweed
- 1985 Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs
- 1986 Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove
- 1987 Peter Taylor - A Summons to Memphis
- 1988 Toni Morrison - Beloved
- 1989 Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons
- 1990 Oscar Hijuelos - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
- 1991 John Updike - Rabbit At Rest
- 1992 Jane Smiley - A Thousand Acres
- 1993 Robert Olen Butler - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
- 1994 E. Annie Proulx - The Shipping News
- 1995 Carol Shields - The Stone Diaries
- 1996 Richard Ford - Independence Day
- 1997 Steven Millhauser - Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer
- 1998 Philip Roth - American Pastoral
- 1999 Michael Cunningham - The Hours
- 2000 Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies
- 2001 Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- 2002 Richard Russo - Empire Falls
