Beginning this year, for books published in 2023, two book prizes will be awarded: one for best first book, one for best subsequent book. Nominated books may be on any topic related to the study of Victorian Britain and must have a 2023 copyright date. Note that only monographs are eligible (edited collections and new editions cannot be considered). Self-nominations are acceptable—indeed, encouraged. Nominating emails stating clearly which category the nominated title fits into (first or subsequent book) and, if possible, accompanied by press contact information or a PDF of the book should be sent to cannon.schmitt@utoronto.ca. The deadline for nominations is 1 March 2024.
Past Winners:
Books published in 2022
winner: Steven King (Nottingham Trent U), Paul Carter (National Archives, UK), Natalie Carter (Nottingham Trent U), Peter Jones (U of Glasgow), and Carol Beardmore (Open U), In Their Own Write: Contesting the New Poor Law, 1834-1900 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
honorable mention: Kristin Mahoney (Michigan SU), Queer Kinship After Wilde: Transnational Decadence and the Family (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Books published in 2021
winner: Tanya Agathocleous (Hunter College, CUNY), Disaffected: Emotion, Sedition, and Colonial Law in the Anglosphere (Cornell UP, 2021)
honorable mention: Talia Schaffer (Queen's College, CUNY), Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction (Princeton UP, 2021)
Books published in 2020
winner: Clare Pettitt (King's College, London), Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815-1848 (Oxford UP, 2020)
honorable mention: Jonah Siegel (Rutgers U), Material Inspirations: The Interests of the Art Object in the Nineteenth Century and After (Oxford UP, 2020)
Books published in 2019
winner: Grace E. Lavery (U of California, Berkeley), Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan (Princeton UP, 2019)
honorable mention: Elizabeth Chang (U of Missouri), Novel Cultivations: Plants in British Literature of the Global Nineteenth Century (U of Virginia P, 2019)
Books published in 2018
winner: Gregory Vargo (New York U), An Underground History of Early Victorian Fiction: Chartism, Radical Print Culture, and the Social Problem Novel (Cambridge UP, 2018)
honorable mention: Sarah Allison (Loyola U, New Orleans), Reductive Reading: A Syntax of Victorian Moralizing (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
Books published in 2017
winner: Yopie Prins (U Michigan), Ladies' Greek: Victorian Translations of Tragedy (Princeton UP, 2017)
honorable mention: Daniel Hack (U Michigan), Reaping Something New: African American Transformations of Victorian Literature (Princeton UP, 2017)
Books published in 2016
winner: Talia Schaffer (CUNY), Romance's Rival: Familiar Marriage in Victorian Fiction (Oxford UP)
Books published in 2015
winner: Helena Michie (Rice U) and Robyn Warhol (Ohio State U), Love Among the Archives: Writing the Lives of Sir George Scharf, Victorian Bachelor (Edinburgh UP)
Books published in 2014
winner: Seth Koven (Rutgers U), The Match Girl and the Heiress (Princeton UP)
honorable mention: Andrew Sartori (New York U), Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History (U of California P)
honorable mention: Aeron Hunt (Brown U), Personal Business: Character and Commerce in Victorian Literature and Culture (U of Virginia P)
Books published in 2013
winner: Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (U California, Davis), Slow Print: Literary Radicalism and Late Victorian Print Culture (Stanford UP)
honorable mention: Adelene Buckland (Cambridge U), Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology (U of Chicago P)
Books published in 2012
winner: Catherine Robson (NYU), Heart Beats: Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem (Princeton UP)