BookAwardtv. Interviews. Readings. Streaming or On-Demand. Watch
International Book Award News Headlines
UK & Irish Adult Literary Prizes
Arthur C. Clarke (SF)
Betty Thrask
British Science FictionBooker Prize
Commonwealth Writers
Costa Book Awards
Daggers (crime writers)
Desmond Eliott
Dublin International
Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers
Elizabeth Longford (Historical Bio)
Galaxy British
Guardian First Book
Irish Book Award
James Tait-Black
Llewellyn Rhys
Man Booker Prize
Orange Broadband Prize
Orwell Prize for Politcal Writing
Romantic Novel of the Year
Saltire Society Scottish Literary Awards
Samuel Johnson (non-fiction)
Somerset-Maugham
Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year
Sundial Scottish
Royal Society for Science Prizes
Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year
Wales Book of the Year
Warwick Prize - New
Wolfson History Prize
Children & Teen Award Lists. Over 150 Literary Prizes.
British and Irish Children's & Teen Book Awards
Most Popular International
Pulitzer (US)
National (US)
Miles Franklin (AUS)
CBCA (kidslit AUS)
Book Critics (US)
Giller (CAN)
Gov- General (CAN)
Caldecott (kidslit US)
Newbery (kidslitUS)
100 British & International Book Awards List. Winners. Shorts. Books. Enter
150 Children & Teen Book Awards List. Enter
terms of use - privacy - contact - about
Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English Language. One is awarded for fiction and the second for biography. They are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, part of the United Kingdom, the prizes were founded by Mrs Janet Coutts Black in memory of her late husband, James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd. The winners are chosen by the Professor of English Literature at the University, who is assisted by PhD students in the shortlisting phase.
Major literary figures to receive the award include D. H. Lawrence, Arnold Bennett, John Buchan, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Muriel Spark, J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble and Salman Rushdie.
Britain's oldest literary prize winners announced
24th August- THE winners of Britain's oldest literary prizes have been announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Two writers have joined the ranks of literary giants such as DH Lawrence, E
M Forster and Graham Greene by winning the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes.
Rosalind Belben won the fiction prize for her acclaimed novel, Our Horses in Egypt.
Rosemary Hill is the recipient of the biographyprize for her first book, God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain.
The prizes, worth £10,000, are awarded annually by Edinburgh University for the best work of fiction and the best biography published during the previous year.
Rosemary Hill said: "I first heard of this award not as a writer but as a reader, where I found it set like a seal on everything I most admired in biography. I am thrilled and very honoured to have won it."

An award-winning poet, a best-selling American author and a Man Booker Prize contender are on the shortlist for Britain's oldest literary award.
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are awarded annually by the University of Edinburgh for the best work of fiction and the best biography published during the previous year.
Acclaimed writers John Burnside, Daniel Mason and Mohsin Hamid are on the 2008 shortlist for the £10,000 awards, along with Rosalind Belben and newcomer Gee Williams. The five novels competing for the £10,000 fiction prize are Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben (Vintage), The Devil's Footprints
by John Burnside (right)(Vintage), The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid (Penguin), A Far Country
by Daniel Mason (Picador) and Salvage
by Gee Williams (Alcem
i).
Contenders for the biography prize include accounts on philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill and architect Augustus Pugin who designed the Houses of Parliament. The shortlisted works for the biography section, also with a £10,000 prize are Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes - In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray (Bloomsbury), God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain
by Rosemary Hill (Allen Lane), Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee (Vintage), Young Stalin
by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Phoenix) and John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand
by Richard Reeves (Atlantic).
The broadcaster James Naughtie will announce the winners at a ceremony at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August. Naughtie is one of four honorary Edinburgh graduates on the advisory committee for the awards, along with Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall-Smith, and the Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Catherine Lockerbie.
Manager of the awards, Professor Colin Nicholson of the University of Edinburgh, said: "This year's short-listed novels combine cracking story-telling with exceptional writing skills, as do the nominated biographies, which additionally offer fascinating insights into the lives of some extraordinary people."
The awards were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats, the widow of publisher James Tait Black, to commemorate her husband's love of literature. Past winners include DH Lawrence, Graham Greene and Salman Rushdie.
PAST WINNERS 1919 TO 2006
YEAR OF AWARD |
FICTION | BIOGRAPHY |
2006 |
Cormac McCarthy The Road |
Byron Rogers The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of R. S. Thomas (Aurum Press) |
2005 |
Ian McEwan Saturday |
Sue Prideaux Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream |
2004 |
David Peace GB84 |
Jonathan Bate John Clare |
2003 |
Andrew O'Hagan Personality |
Janet Browne Charles Darwin: The Power of Place: Power of Place v. 2 |
2002 |
Jonathan Franzen The Corrections |
Jenny Uglow Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future |
2001 |
Sid Smith Something Like a House |
Robert Skidelsky John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, 1937-1946 Vol 3 |
2000 |
Zadie Smith White Teeth |
Martin Amis Experience |
1999 |
Timothy Mo Renegade or Halo2 (Paddleless Press) |
Kathryn Hughes George Eliot: The Last Victorian (Fourth Estate) |
1998 |
Beryl Bainbridge Master Georgie (Duckworth) |
Peter Ackroyd The Life of Thomas More (Chatto & Windus) |
1997 |
Andrew Miller Ingenious Pain (Sceptre imprint, Oxford University Press) |
R.F. Foster W.B. Yeats: A Life Volume1 - The Apprentice Mage 1965-1914 [Hodder & Stoughton]) |
1996 |
Joint Award Graham Swift Last Orders (Picador Macmillan) and Alice Thompson Justine (Canongate) |
Diarmaid MacCulloch Thomas Cranmer: A Life (Yale) |
1995 |
Christopher Priest The Prestige (Touchstone) |
Gitta Sereny Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth (Macmillan) |
1994 |
Alan Hollinghurst The Folding Star (Chatto & Windus) |
Doris Lessing Under My Skin (Harper Collins) |
1993 |
Caryl Phillips Crossing The River (Bloomsbury) |
Richard Holmes Dr Johnson And Mr Savage (Hodder & Stoughton) |
1992 |
Rose Tremain Sacred Country (Sinclair Stevenson) |
Charles Nicoll The Reckoning: The Murder Of Christopher Marlowe (Jonathan Cape) |
1991 |
Iain Sinclair Downriver (Michael Joseph) |
Adrian Desmond and James Moore Darwin (Paladin) |
1990 |
William Boyd Brazzaville Beach (Sinclair Stevenson) |
Claire Tomalin The Invisible Woman: The Story Of Nelly Ternan And Charles Dickens (Viking) |
1989 |
James Kelman A Disaffection (Secker & Warburg) |
Ian Gibson Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life (Faber & Faber) |
1988 |
Piers Paul Read A Season In The West (Secker & Warburg) |
Brian McGuinness
Wittgenstein, A Life: Young Ludwig (1889-1921) (Duckworth) |
1987 |
George Mackay Brown The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories (John Murray) |
Ruth Dudley Edwards, Victor Gollancz: A Biography (Victor Gollancz) |
1986 |
Jenny Joseph Persephone (Bloodaxe Books) |
D. Felicitas Corrigan Helen Waddell (Victor Gollancz) |
1985 |
Robert Edric Winter Garden (André Deutsch) |
David Nokes Jonathan Swift: A Hypocrite Reversed (OUP) |
1984 |
Joint Award: J. G. Ballard Empire Of The Sun (Gollancz) and Angela Carter Nights At The Circus (Chatto & Windus) |
Lyndall Gordon Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (OUP) |
1983 |
Jonathan Keates Allegro Postillions (Salamander Press) |
Alan Walker Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years (Faber) |
1982 |
Bruce Chatwin On The Black Hill (Cape) |
Richard Ellmann James Joyce (OUP) |
1981 |
Joint Award: Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children (Cape) and Paul Theroux The Mosquito Coast (Hamish Hamilton) |
Victoria Glendinning Edith Sitwell: Unicorn Among Lions (Weidenfeld) |
1980 |
J. M. Coetzee Waiting For The Barbarians (Secker & Warburg) |
Robert B. Martin Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart (OUP) |
1979 |
William Golding Darkness Visible (Faber) |
Brian Finney Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography (Faber) |
1978 |
Maurice Gee Plumb (Faber) |
Robert Gittings The Older Hardy (Heinemann Educational) |
1977 |
John Le Carré The Honourable Schoolboy (Hodder & Stoughton) |
George Painter Chateaubriand, Vol.1: The Longed-For Tempests (Chatto & Windus) |
1976 |
John Banville Doctor Copernicus (Secker & Warburg) |
Ronald Hingley A New Life Of Chekhov (OUP) |
1975 |
Brian Moore The Great Victorian Collection (Cape) |
Karl Miller Cockburn's Millennium (Duckworth) |
1974 |
Lawrence Durrell Monsieur, Or The Prince Of Darkness |
John Wain Samuel Johnson |
1973 |
Iris Murdoch The Black Prince |
Robin Lane Fox Alexander The Great |
1972 |
John Berger G |
Quentin Bell Virginia Woolf |
1971 |
Nadine Gordimer A Guest Of Honour |
Julia Namier Lewis Namier |
1970 |
Lily Powell The Bird Of Paradise |
Jasper Ridley Lord Palmerston |
1969 |
Elizabeth Bowen Eva Trout |
Antonia Fraser Mary, Queen Of Scots |
1968 |
Maggie Ross The Gasteropod |
Gordon S. Haight George Eliot |
1967 |
Margaret Drabble Jerusalem The Golden |
Winifred Gérin Charlotte Brontë, The Evolution Of Genius |
1966 |
Joint Award: Christine Brooke-Rose Langrishe and Aidan Higgins Go Down |
Geoffrey Keynes The Life Of William Harvey Such |
1965 |
Muriel Spark The Mandelbaum Gate |
Mary Moorman William Wordsworth, The Later Years 1803-1850 |
1964 |
Frank Tuohy The Ice Saints |
Elizabeth Longford Victoria R.I. |
1963 |
Gerda Charles A Slanting Light |
Georgina Battiscome John Keble: A Study In Limitations |
1962 |
Ronald Hardy Act Of Destruction |
Meriol Trevor Newman: The Pillar And The Cloud and Newman: Light In Winter |
1961 |
Jennifer Dawson The Ha-Ha |
M. K. Ashby Joseph Ashby Of Tysoe |
1960 |
Rex Warner Imperial Caesar |
Canon Adam Fox The Life Of Dean Inge |
1959 |
Morris West The Devil's Advocate |
Christopher Hassall Edward Marsh |
1958 |
Angus Wilson The Middle Age Of Mrs Eliot |
Joyce Hemlow The History Of Fanny Burney |
1957 |
Anthony Powell At Lady Molly's |
Maurice Cranston Life Of John Locke |
1956 |
Rose Macauley The Towers Of Trebizond |
St John Greer Ervine George Bernard Shaw |
1955 |
Ivy Compton-Burnett Mother And Son |
R. W. Ketton-Cremer Thomas Gray |
1954 |
C. P. Snow The New Men and The Masters in sequence |
Keith Feiling Warren Hastings |
1953 |
Margaret Kennedy Troy Chimneys |
Carola Oman Sir John Moore |
1952 |
Evelyn Waugh Men At Arms |
G. M. Young Stanley Baldwin |
1951 |
W. C. Chapman-Mortimer Father Goose |
Noel G. Annan Leslie Stephen |
1950 |
Robert Henriquez Along The Valley |
Mrs Cecil Woodham-Smith Florence Nightingale |
1949 |
Emma Smith The Far Cry |
John Connell W. E. Henley |
1948 |
Graham Greene The Heart Of The Matter |
Percy A. Scholes The Great Dr Burney |
1947 |
L. P. Hartley Eustace And Hilda |
Rev. C. C. E. Raven English Naturalists From Neckham To Ray |
1946 |
G. Oliver Onions Poor Man's Tapestry |
R. Aldington Wellington |
1945 |
L. A. G. Strong Travellers |
D. S. MacColl Philip Wilson Steer |
1944 |
Forrest Reid Young Tom |
C. V. Wedgwood William The Silent |
1943 |
Mary Lavin Tales From Bectine Bridge |
G. G. Coulton Fourscore Years |
1942 |
Arthur Whaley Monkey By Wu Ch'eng-en |
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Henry Ponsonby: Queen Victoria's Private Secretary |
1941 |
Joyce Cary A House Of Children |
John Gore King George V |
1940 |
Charles Morgan The Voyage |
Hilda F. M. Prescott Spanish Tudor |
1939 |
Aldous Huxley After Many A Summer Dies The Swan |
David C. Douglas English Scholars |
1938 |
C. S. Forester A Ship Of The Line and Flying Colours |
Sir Edmund Chambers Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
1937 |
Neil M. Gunn Highland River |
Lord Eustace Percy John Knox |
1936 |
Winifred Holtby South Riding |
Edward Sackville West A Flame In Sunlight: The Life And Work Of Thomas de Quincey |
1935 |
L. H. Myers The Root And The Flower |
R. W. Chambers Thomas More |
1934 |
Robert Graves I, Claudius and Claudius The God |
J. E. Neale Queen Elizabeth |
1933 |
A. G. Macdonell England, Their England |
Violet Clifton The Book Of Talbot |
1932 |
Helen Simpson Boomerang |
Stephen Gwynn The Life Of Mary Kingsley |
1931 |
Kate O'Brien Without My Cloak |
J. Y. R. Greig David Hume |
1930 |
E. H. Young Miss Mole |
Francis Yeats Brown Lives Of A Bengal Lancer |
1929 |
J. B. Priestley The Good Companions |
Lord David Cecil The Stricken Deer: Or The Life Of Cowper |
1928 |
Siegfried Sassoon Memoirs Of A Fox-Hunting Man |
John Buchan Montrose |
1927 |
Francis Brett Young Portrait Of Clare |
H. A. L. Fisher James Bryce, Viscount Bryce Of Dechmont, O.M. |
1926 |
Radclyffe Hall Adam's Breed |
Rev. Dr H. B. Workman John Wyclif: A Study Of The English Medieval Church |
1925 |
Liam O'Flaherty The Informer |
Geoffrey Scott The Portrait Of Zelide |
1924 |
E. M. Forster A Passage To India |
Rev. William Wilson The House Of Airlie |
1923 |
Arnold Bennett Riceyman Steps |
Sir Ronald Ross Memoirs, Etc |
1922 |
David Garnett Lady Into Fox |
Percy Lubbock Earlham |
1921 |
Walter de la Mare Memoirs Of A Midget |
Lytton Strachey Queen Victoria |
1920 |
D. H. Lawrence The Lost Girl |
G. M. Trevelyan Lord Grey Of The Reform Bill |
1919 |
Hugh Walpole The Secret City |
H. Festing Jones Samuel Butler, Author Of Erewhon (1835-1902) - A Memoir |
Home | Amazon UK | Bookrabbit uk | Alibris-uk | Abe books uk | BBC Shop | Blackwell Books| Books Direct | Borders | Countrybookshop UK| Foyles | mills & boon| Simply audio uk | qbd books au | seek books au| the nile books au | fishpond books au| eHarlequin romance au | cook books au |fishpond nz | the nile Books nz |abe usa | alibris usa|amazon usa|barnes & noble usa |biblio|indies usa | powells books usa | simply audio usa | eBooks.com
|
|abe books.ca |amazon.ca | chapters.indigo.ca
| kalahari.net sa| amazon france
| bookawards.co.nz | bookawardsonline.com usa | canlitawards.com | literaryawards.com.au|Borders Xmas Catalogue -Free UK Delivery! |Amazon Xmas Store |
Blackwell Xmas Collection | Book Club | Subscribe to Literary Award News by Email | BookAwardTV |privacy| about | contact | tragic blog |Award Headlines
![]()
Enter Lit Award World! Over 100 British and International Adult Book Awards. Winners. Shortlists
KidsLit and Teen Lit Award World is Wonderful! 150+ book awardsl Enter![]()