The Literary Encyclopedia Scholarship Fund Supports

Book Prizes

for major scholarly contributions to the understanding of literature

In 2023 The Literary Encyclopedia will award two prizes, each worth £2000, one for scholarly contributions to our understanding of literature originally in the English language, the other for scholarly contributions to our understanding of literature originally in another language.

Eligibility

Works eligible for these prizes will be biographies, editions, or critical studies of literary writers, groups, works or periods. Volumes of essays by various hands will not be eligible.

The authors of submitted works must be: 1. engaged in research at an institution which subscribes to The Literary Encyclopedia OR 2. contributors of articles to The Literary Encyclopedia OR 3. members of scholarly associations affiliated to our publication who currently have an active membership account on our site.

Funding

These prizes are funded by contributors to and editors of The Literary Encyclopedia who donate their royalties to our Scholarship Fund which also provides research travel grants to early career researchers. Please see https://www.litencyc.com/php/travel_award.php.

Process of Submission

The works submitted for consideration by the assessors for the 2023 prizes should have been published in 2021 or 2022.

Submissions for the prize should be sent to The Literary Encyclopedia by 30th June 2023 and should comprise up to three endorsements of the submitted work by reputed scholars in the relevant field. These endorsements should be confidential (and sent from reviewers directly to us), and should specify the work’s significance and originality in less than 1500 words. Submissions may also be accompanied by copies of published or in-press reviews of the book in well-reputed scholarly journals or national media.

Assessors will review the submissions and prepare a short list which will be announced in early August. In the meantime, we also invite submission of e-copies of the book that is being submitted for assessment. This is not a requirement at this point, but we encourage authors to make timely arrangements with their publishing house for an electronic copy of the book to be sent to us in the course of the summer (by August at the latest). If a book is short-listed, we will need to have the full electronic copy at hand for review as soon as possible.

We regret we cannot accept physical copies.

The winners will be announced on December 1st 2023.