National
Book Awards - 1953
FICTION
Winner:
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
> Read His Acceptance Speech
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction Blog
> Read Neil Baldwin's National Book Award Classics Essay
Finalists:
Isabel Bolton - Many Mansions
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >H.L. Davis - Winds of Morning
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Thomas Gallagher - The Gathering Darkness
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Carl Jonas - Jefferson Selleck
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Peter Martin - The Landsman
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >May Sarton - A Shower of Summer Days
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Jean Stafford - The Catherine Wheel
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >John Steinbeck - East of Eden
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >William Carlos Williams - The Build-Up
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >
NONFICTION
Winner:
Bernard A. De Voto, The Course of Empire
> Read His Acceptance Speech
Finalists:
Herbert Agar - A Declaration of Faith
Conrad Aiken - Ushant
Frederick L. Allen - The Big Change
Robert Brittain - Let There Be Bread
Van Wyck Brooks - The Confident Years
Whittaker Chambers - Witness
Eleanor Clark - Rome and a Villa
William O. Douglas - Beyond the High Himalayas
Douglas S. Freeman - George Washington, Vol. V
Eric Goldman - Rendezvous with Destiny
Learned Hand - The Spirit of Liberty
Irving Howe - William Faulkner
Herbert Muller - The Uses of the Past
F.S.C. Northrup - The Taming of the Nations
Katherine Anne Porter - The Days Before
J.G. Randall - Midstream: Lincoln the President
Benjamin Thomas - Abraham Lincoln
Dixon Wecter - Sam Clemens of Hannibal
Kenneth P. Williams - Lincoln Finds a General, Vol. III
Edmund Wilson - The Shores of Light
POETRY
Winner:
Archibald MacLeish, Collected Poems, 1917-1952
> Read His Acceptance Speech
> NBA Poetry Blog Essay and Archival Material for MacLeish
Finalists:
Stanley Burnshaw - Early and Late Testament
Thomas H. Ferril - New and Selected Poems
Robert Hillyer - The Suburb by the Sea
Ernest Kroll - Cape Horn and Other Poems
W.S. Merwin - A Mask for Janus
Byron H. Reece - A Song of Joy
Naomi Replansky - Ring Song
Kenneth Rexroth - The Dragon and the Unicorn
Jesse Stuart - Kentucky is My Land
Ridgely Torrence - Poems
Peter Viereck - The First Morning