Bob Dylan: Did he deserve the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize in Literature for creating "new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

Announcing the award from the Swedish Academy, Permanent Secretary Sara Danius said Dylan was a great poet in the English-speaking tradition.

"He is a wonderful sampler, a very original sampler," she said. "He embodies the tradition and for 55 years now he has been at it, reinventing himself constantly and creating a new identity."

Professor Seamus Perry, chair of the English Faculty at Oxford University, described Dylan as "one of the greats," and the Tennyson of our times.

He said: "Dylan winning the Nobel was always the thing that you thought should happen in a reasonable world but still seemed quite unimaginable in this one.

"He is, more than any other, the poet of our times, as Tennyson was of his, representative and yet wholly individual, humane, angry, funny, and tender by turn; really, wholly himself, one of the greats."

The legendary singer-songwriter has sold more than 110 million records and played thousands of gigs during his career.

The 75-year-old laureate, who began his career as the leading light of the early 1960s folk boom before embracing electric rock 'n' roll, grew up in Minnesota.

Memorable Dylan Lyrics

:: Blowin' in the Wind

"How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?"

:: Hurricane

"How can the life of such a man, be in the palm of some fool's hand? To see him obviously framed, couldn't help but make me feel ashamed."

:: Like a Rolling Stone

"You used to laugh about, everybody that was hanging out, now you don't talk so loud, now you don't seem so proud, about having to be scrounging for your next meal."

:: Shelter From the Storm

"I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form, come in she said I'll give ya shelter from the storm."

:: Ain't Talkin'

"Ain't talkin', just walkin' up the road, around the bend. Heart burnin', still yearnin' in the last outback at the world's end."

Early in his career, Dylan - born Robert Zimmerman, was lauded for his acoustic protest songs such as Blowin' In The Wind.

His first album was the eponymous Bob Dylan released in 1962.

The Nobel literature award was the last of this year's prizes to be announced, with all six awards to be given out on 10 December.

Previous literature winners include author Doris Lessing in 2007 and playwright Harold Pinter in 2005.

Since 1901, the prize has been awarded every year to an author who has, in the words of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction".

The Nobel prize is not the first time Dylan has won such a highly coveted award - he was also given the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to American music and culture.