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Book Prize
NAVSA is pleased to announce that nominations are open for best first book and best subsequent book published in 2024. Nominated books may be on any topic related to the study of Victorian Britain and must have a 2024 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 a PDF of the book and press contact information should be sent to Cannon Schmitt. The deadline for nominations is March 1, 2025.
Past Winners
BOOKS published in 2023
first book prize winner: Jennifer MacLure (Kent State U), The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2023)
first book prize hon. mention: Renée Fox, The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature (Ohio State UP, 2023)
subsequent book prize winner: Kathy Alexis Psomiades (Duke U), Primitive Marriage: Victorian Anthropology, the Novel, and Sexual Modernity (Oxford UP, 2023)
subsequent book prize hon. mention: Patrick R. O’Malley, The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century (U of Virginia P, 2023)
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)
hon. 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)
hon. 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)
hon. 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)
hon. 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)
hon. 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)
hon. 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)
hon. mention: Andrew Sartori (New York U), Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History (U of California P)
hon. 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)
hon. 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)