| 1930 | Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge |
| 1931 | Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes |
| 1932 | The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck |
| 1933 | The Store by T.S. Stribling |
| 1934 | Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller |
| 1935 | Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson |
| 1936 | Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis |
| 1937 | Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell |
| 1938 | The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand |
| 1939 | The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings |
| 1960 | Advise and Consent by Allen Drury |
| 1961 | To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee |
| 1962 | The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor |
| 1963 | The Reivers by William Faulkner |
| 1964 | No award given |
| 1965 | The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau |
| 1966 | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter |
| 1967 | The Fixer by Bernard Malamud |
| 1968 | The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron |
| 1969 | House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday |
| 1980 | The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer |
| 1981 | A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole |
| 1982 | Rabbit is Rich by John Updike |
| 1983 | The Color Purple by Alice Walker |
| 1984 | Ironweed by William Kennedy |
| 1985 | Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie |
| 1986 | Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry |
| 1987 | A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylorby David J. Garrow |
| 1988 | Beloved by Toni Morrison |
| 1989 | Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler |
| 1990 | The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos |
| 1991 | Rabbit at Rest by John Updike |
| 1992 | A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley |
| 1993 | A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler |
| 1994 | The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx |
| 1995 | The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields |
| 1996 | Independence Day by Richard Ford |
| 1997 | Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser |
| 1998 | American Pastoral by Philip Roth |
| 1999 | The Hours by Michael Cunningham |
