The purpose of this paper is to introduce a class of generalized nonlinear evolution equations, which can be widely applied to describing a variety of phenomena in nonlinear physical science. A KdV-type Wronskian formulation is constructed by employing the Wronskian conditions of the KdV equation. Applications are made for the (3+1)-dimensional generalized KP, BKP and Jimbo–Miwa equations, thereby presenting their Wronskian sufficient conditions. An N-soliton solution in terms of Wronskian determinant is obtained. Under a dimensional reduction, our results yield Wronskian solutions of the KdV equation.