Nobel Prize in Literature publicly available at The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Currently, only nominations submitted between 1901 and 1968 are available for public viewing. This secrecy has led to speculation about the next Nobel laureate. According to Göran Malmqvist of the Swedish Academy, Chinese writer Shen Congwen was to have been awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, had he not suddenly died that year. From 1901 to 1912, the committee, headed by the conservative Carl David af Wirsén, weighed the literary quality of a work against its contribution towards humanity's struggle 'toward the ideal'. Tolstoy, Ibsen, Zola, and
Sully Prudhomme (1874), permanently damaged his health. During his career, Prudhomme gradually shifted from the sentimental style of his first books towards a more personal style which unified the formality of the Parnassus school with his interest in philosophical and scientific subjects. The inspiration was clearly Lucretius's "De rerum natura", for the first book of which he made a verse translation. His philosophy was expressed in "La Justice" (1878) and "Le Bonheur" (1888). The extreme economy of means employed in these poems has, however, usually been judged as compromising their poetical quality without advancing their claims as works of philosophy. He was