Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler (24 April 1845 – 29 December 1924) was a Swiss poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919 "in special appreciation of his epic Olympian Spring".

Young Spitteler attended the gymnasium at Basel, having among his teachers philologist Wilhelm Wackernagel and historian Jacob Burckhardt.

Later he was elementary teacher in Bern and La Neuveville, as well as journalist for the Der Kunstwart and as editor for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

His prose works include Die Mädchenfeinde (Two Little Misogynists, 1907), about his autobiographical childhood experiences, the dramatic Conrad der Leutnant (1898), in which he show influence from the previously opposed Naturalism, and the autobiographical novella Imago (1906), examining the role of the unconscious in the conflict between a creative mind and the middle-class restrictions with internal monologue.

During World War I he opposed the pro-German attitude of the Swiss German-speaking majority, a position put forward in the essay "Unser Schweizer Standpunkt".