The 1909 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings.

In his award ceremony speech on 10 December 1909, Claes Annerstedt of the Swedish Academy said: "Geijer, Tegnér, or Runeberg, to mention only them, could justly have laid claim to the Nobel Prize, and the development which these great men have started has grown to fuller bloom.

[5] In total, the Nobel committee received 38 nominations for 21 writers including Angelo de Gubernatis, Maurice Maeterlinck (awarded in 1911), Iwan Gilkin, and Jaroslav Vrchlický.

[6] The authors Gustaf af Geijerstam, Innokenty Annensky, Jakub Bart-Ćišinski, Rosa Nouchette Carey, Euclides da Cunha, John Davidson, Amalia Domingo Soler, George Manville Fenn, Clyde Fitch, Jacob Gordin, Sarah Orne Jewett, Cesare Lombroso, Luis Alfredo Martínez, Clorinda Matto de Turner, Catulle Mendès, Alfredo Oriani, Signe Rink, John Millington Synge, Renée Vivien, Rudolf von Gottschall, Detlev von Liliencron, Ernst von Wildenbruch, and Egerton Ryerson Young died in 1909 without having been nominated for the prize.

[citation needed] Committee chair Carl David af Wirsén yet again, knowing that Swinburne died months before the Nobel announcement, launched for Belgian writers Maeterlinck and Verhaeren.

[citation needed] He regarded on Maeterlinck as "one of the finest writers in the continent" and praised his "brilliant compositions in works like The Blind and Pelléas and Mélisande, as was the same for Verhaeren's poetic oeuvres.