Emerson-Thoreau Medal

Established in 1958 to give special recognition to distinguished achievement in the broad field of literature, the prize is awarded to an individual for his or her total literary achievement rather than for a specific work.

Recipients

2023

Maxine Hong Kingston, novelist.
Prize press release
Honoree introduction and remarks

2019

Margaret Atwood, poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and teacher.
Prize press release
Honoree introduction and remarks

2016

Toni Morrison, novelist, essayist, and teacher
Prize press release

2013

Philip Roth, novelist.

1989

Norman Mailer, novelist and critic.

1979

James T. Farrell, novelist, critic, and essayist.

1977

Saul Bellow, teacher, novelist, critic of society.

1975

Robert Penn Warren, novelist, poet, critic, teacher.

1970

I. A. Richards, poet, critic, teacher of critics.

1969

Hannah Arendt, social and political historian and philosopher.

1968

John Crowe Ransom, poet and critic.

1967

Joseph Wood Krutch, critic, biographer, and naturalist

1966

Edmund Wilson, writer and critic.

1965

Lewis Mumford, teacher, critic, and philosopher.

1963

Mark Van Doren, poet, critic, and teacher.

1962

Katherine Anne Porter, novelist.

1961

Samuel Eliot Morison, biographer, historian, and scholar.

1960

Henry Beston, author and naturalist.

1959

Thomas Stearns Eliot, poet, critic, and playwright.

1958

Robert Frost, poet.