SOURCE: Stuckey, W. J. “Joseph Pulitzer and His Prizes.” In The Pulitzer Prize Novels: A Critical Backward Look, pp. 3-25. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981.

In the following excerpt, Stuckey provides biographical and historical context for Joseph Pulitzer, the founder of the Pulitzer Prizes, and for the award itself.

The life story of Joseph Pulitzer, founder of the Pulitzer prizes in journalism, letters, and music, fits beautifully into a familiar pattern of American success. Pulitzer arrived in this country in 1864 at the age of seventeen, without money and with almost no competence in the English language. By a combination of hard work, shrewdness, thrift, perseverance, some luck and some opportunism, he made his way relentlessly to financial eminence. When he died in 1911, Pulitzer left a fortune of almost nineteen million dollars, including two large and prosperous newspapers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World.¹

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