Sully Prudhomme elected to the Académie française in 1881. Another distinction, "Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur", was to follow in 1895. After, "Le Bonheur", Prudhomme turned from poetry to write essays on aesthetics and philosophy. He published two important essays: "L'Expression dans les beaux-arts" (1884) and "Réflexions sur l'art des vers" (1892), a series of articles on Blaise Pascal in "La Revue des Deux Mondes" (1890), and an article on free will ("La Psychologie du Libre-Arbitre", 1906) in the "Revue de métaphysique et de morale". The first writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (given "in special recognition of his poetic
Charles Prudhomme dismayed to learn that he was assigned to work at the Provident Hospital, which provided medical care to black people. He returned to Washington, DC to work at St. Elizabeth's, but he was unsuccessful. In 1940, using his contacts with then U.S. Senator Harry Truman, arrangements were made for Prudhomme to go to Tuskegee, Alabama, and work at the Veterans Administration hospital for black veterans. He met many black psychiatrists who had been trained in Boston by Solomon Carter Fuller (1872-1953), the first American black psychiatrist. Prudhomme remained at Tuskegee until 1943 when the U.S. Army transferred him to Howard