The 1906 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Italian poet Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907) "not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces.

[2] Carducci started composing poetry while he was young, influenced by both the poets of his own time and those he had studied in the ancient and Italian periods.

[6] The Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy received 54 nominations for 24 writers among them Leo Tolstoy, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Selma Lagerlöf (awarded in 1909), Jaroslav Vrchlický, Georg Brandes, and Antonio Fogazzaro.

Eleven of the nominees were nominated first-time such as Pedro Pablo Figueroa, Gaston Boissier, Louis Franck, George Lansing Raymond, Borden Parker Bowne, Angelo de Gubernatis, and William Booth.

[7] The authors Émile Boutmy, Eliza Brightwen, Ferdinand Brunetière, Ellen Mary Clerke, Anne Ross Cousin, José María de Pereda, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Max Eyth, Giuseppe Giacosa, Alexander Kielland, Jean Lorrain, Agnes Catherine Maitland, Bartolomé Mitre, Vasile Pogor, Charlotte Riddell, Hendrik Jan Schimmel, Elizabeth Missing Sewell, Eduard von Hartmann, and Adeline Dutton Whitney died in 1906 without having been nominated for the prize.