He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson "for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos".

[5] At a young age he lost both his parents, his father died of tuberculosis in 1910 and a year later his mother emigrated to Portland, Oregon leaving behind her children, whereafter Martinson was placed as a foster child (Kommunalbarn) in the Swedish countryside.

[6] At the age of sixteen Harry Martinson, as he now called himself, had run away and signed onto a ship in Gothenburg to spend the next years sailing around the world visiting countries including Brazil and India.

Together with Artur Lundkvist, Gustav Sandgren, Erik Asklund and Josef Kjellgren he authored the anthology Fem unga (Five Youths),[12] which introduced Swedish modernism.

[3][4] Harry Martinson debuted in 1929 with the collection of poems Spökskepp (Ghost Ship), that for the most part employed motifs of the ocean and life as a seaman.

In his book Verklighet till döds (Reality to Death, 1940) written during World War II Martinson criticized contemporary social conditions and technological development.

Criticism of modern culture is also a theme in Martinson's philosophical vagabond novel Vägen till Klockrike (1948; English translation The Road, 1950) and the collection of poems Passad (1945).

On 3 October 1974 the Swedish Academy announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature that year should be awarded jointly to Harry Martinson and Eyvind Johnson.

Although there were also positive reactions to the prize decision, the sensitive Martinson took the negative comments aimed at the Academy personally and found it hard the enjoy the recognition.

[18] The sensitive Martinson found it hard to cope with the criticism following his 1974 Nobel Prize award in Literature, and died by suicide on 11 February 1978 at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm by cutting his stomach open with a pair of scissors in what has been described as a "hara-kiri-like manner".