Thomas Wolfe of an immense exuberance, organic in its form, kinetic, and drenched with the love of life... I rejoice over Mr. Wolfe." Both in his 1930 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech and original press conference announcement, Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, said of Wolfe, "He may have a chance to be the greatest American writer... In fact I don't see why he should not be one of the greatest world writers." Upon publication of his second novel, "Of Time and the River", most reviewers and the public remained supportive, though some critics found
Nobel Prize in Literature of the gesture. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in 1904, to be shared with the Provençal writer Frédéric Mistral, in recognition of their contributions to literature in non-official languages. Political pressure from Spain's central government having made this prize impossible, it was eventually awarded to Mistral and to the Spanish language playwright José Echegaray. The choice of Selma Lagerlöf (Sweden 1858–1940) as Nobel Laureate in 1909 (for the 'lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterizes her writings') followed fierce debate because of her writing style and subject matter, which broke literary decorums of the time.