James Tait Black Memorial Prize

The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, United Kingdom, the prizes were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats Black in memory of her late husband, James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd. Prizes are awarded in two categories: Fiction and Biography. A Drama prize was awarded from 2013-2019.

WWW ed.ac.uk/events/james-tai...

History

From its inception, the James Tait Black prize was organised without overt publicity. There was a lack of press and publisher attention, initially at least, because Edinburgh was distant from the literary centres of the country. The decision about the award was made by the Regius Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh.
Four winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature received the James Tait Black earlier in their careers: William Golding, Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee each collected the James Tait Black for fiction, whilst Doris Lessing took the prize for biography. In addition to these literary Nobels, Sir Ronald Ross, whose 1923 autobiography Memoirs, Etc. received the biography prize, was already a Nobel laureate, having been awarded the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on malaria.
In 2012, a third prize category was announced for Drama, with the first winner of this award announced in August 2013. The drama prize was paused after the 2019 award, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as of 2024 the university states that "submissions may re-open in January 2025".

Selection process and prize administration

The winners are chosen by the Professor of English Literature at the university, who is assisted by postgraduate students in the shortlisting phase, a structure that is seen to lend the prizes considerable gravitas. At the award of the 2006 prizes, at which Cormac McCarthy was a winner, McCarthy's publisher commented positively on the selection process, noting that, in the absence of a sponsor and literary or media figures amongst the judging panel, the decision is made by "students and professors, whose only real agenda can be great books and great writing". The original endowment is now supplemented by the university and, as a consequence, the total prize fund rose from 2005 awards. Each of the three annual prizes—one for fiction, one for biography, and one for drama—is worth £10,000. The university is advised in relation to the development and administration of the Prize by a small committee which includes Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and James Naughtie amongst its members. In August 2007 the prize ceremony was held at the Edinburgh International Book Festival for the first time.

Eligibility

For the book prizes works of fiction and biographies must be written in English. The nationality of the author does not matter, but submissions must be first published in Britain during the calendar year of the award. Any given author can only win each prize once. However, he or she can win both prizes at the same time.
For the drama category, the work must be originally written in either English, Gaelic or Welsh, be produced first during the previous calendar year, have a playing time over one hour, and have been performed no fewer than seven times by a professional theatre company.

List of recipients

Source.

Year	Fiction award	Biography award	Drama award
1919	Hugh Walpole, The Secret City	Henry Festing Jones, Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon – A Memoir
1920	D. H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl	G. M. Trevelyan, Lord Grey of the Reform Bill
1921	Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget	Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria
1922	David Garnett, Lady into Fox	Percy Lubbock, Earlham
1923	Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps	Ronald Ross, Memoirs, Etc.
1924	E. M. Forster, A Passage to India	William Wilson, The House of Airlie
1925	Liam O'Flaherty, The Informer	Geoffrey Scott, The Portrait of Zelide
1926	Radclyffe Hall, Adam's Breed	Reverend Dr H. B. Workman, John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church
1927	Francis Brett Young, Portrait of Clare	H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce, Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, O.M.
1928	Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man	John Buchan, Montrose
1929	J. B. Priestley, The Good Companions	Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer: or The Life of Cowper
1930	E. H. Young, Miss Mole	Francis Yeats-Brown, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
1931	Kate O'Brien, Without My Cloak	J. Y. T. Greig, David Hume
1932	Helen de Guerry Simpson, Boomerang	Stephen Gwynn, The Life of Mary Kingsley
1933	A. G. Macdonell, England, Their England	Violet Clifton, The Book of Talbot
1934	Robert Graves, I, Claudius and Claudius the God	J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth
1935	Leo Myers, The Root and the Flower	Raymond Wilson Chambers, Thomas More
1936	Winifred Holtby, South Riding	Edward Sackville West, A Flame in Sunlight: The Life and Work of Thomas de Quincey
1937	Neil M. Gunn, Highland River	Lord Eustace Percy, John Knox
1938	C. S. Forester, A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours	Sir Edmund Chambers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1939	Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer	David C. Douglas, English Scholars
1940	Charles Morgan, The Voyage	Hilda F. M. Prescott, Spanish Tudor: Mary I of England
1941	Joyce Cary, A House of Children	John Gore, King George V
1942	Arthur Waley, Translation of Monkey by Wu Cheng'en	Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, Henry Ponsonby: Queen Victoria's Private Secretary
1943	Mary Lavin, Tales from Bective Bridge	G. G. Coulton, Fourscore Years
1944	Forrest Reid, Young Tom	C. V. Wedgwood, William the Silent
1945	L. A. G. Strong, Travellers	D. S. MacColl, Philip Wilson Steer
1946	Oliver Onions, Poor Man's Tapestry	Richard Aldington, A Life of Wellington: The Duke
1947	L. P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda	Charles E. Raven, English Naturalists from Neckam to Ray
1948	Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter	Percy A. Scholes, The Great Dr. Burney
1949	Emma Smith, The Far Cry	John Connell, W. E. Henley
1950	Robert Henriques, Through the Valley	Cecil Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale
1951	Chapman Mortimer, Father Goose	Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen
1952	Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms	G. M. Young, Stanley Baldwin
1953	Margaret Kennedy, Troy Chimneys	Carola Oman, Sir John Moore
1954	C. P. Snow, The New Men and The Masters	Keith Feiling, Warren Hastings
1955	Ivy Compton-Burnett, Mother and Son	R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Thomas Gray
1956	Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond	St John Greer Ervine, George Bernard Shaw
1957	Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's	Maurice Cranston, Life of John Locke
1958	Angus Wilson, The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot	Joyce Hemlow, The History of Fanny Burney
1959	Morris West, The Devil's Advocate	Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh
1960	Rex Warner, Imperial Caesar	Canon Adam Fox, The Life of Dean Inge
1961	Jennifer Dawson, The Ha-Ha	M. K. Ashby, Joseph Ashby of Tysoe
1962	Ronald Hardy, Act of Destruction	Meriol Trevor, Newman: The Pillar and the Cloud and Newman: Light in Winter
1963	Gerda Charles, A Slanting Light	Georgina Battiscombe, John Keble: A Study in Limitations
1964	Frank Tuohy, The Ice Saints	Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R.I.
1965	Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate	Mary Caroline Moorman, William Wordsworth: The Later Years 1803–1850
1966	Christine Brooke-Rose, Such Aidan Higgins, Langrishe, Go Down	Geoffrey Keynes, The Life of William Harvey
1967	Margaret Drabble, Jerusalem the Golden	Winifred Gérin, Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius
1968	Maggie Ross, The Gasteropod	Gordon Haight, George Eliot
1969	Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout	Antonia Fraser, Mary, Queen of Scots
1970	Lily Powell, The Bird of Paradise	Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston
1971	Nadine Gordimer, A Guest of Honour	Julia Namier, Lewis Namier
1972	John Berger, G	Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf
1973	Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince	Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great
1974	Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur: or, The Prince of Darkness	John Wain, Samuel Johnson
1975	Brian Moore, The Great Victorian Collection	Karl Miller, Cockburn's Millennium
1976	John Banville, Doctor Copernicus	Ronald Hingley, A New Life of Chekhov
1977	John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy	George Painter, Chateaubriand: Volume 1 – The Longed-For Tempests
1978	Maurice Gee, Plumb	Robert Gittings, The Older Hardy
1979	William Golding, Darkness Visible	Brian Finney, Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography
1980	J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians	Robert B. Martin, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart
1981	Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast	Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell: Unicorn Among Lions
1982	Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill	Richard Ellmann, James Joyce
1983	Jonathan Keates, Allegro Postillions	Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years
1984	J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus	Lyndall Gordon, Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life
1985	Robert Edric, Winter Garden	David Nokes, Jonathan Swift: A Hypocrite Reversed
1986	Jenny Joseph, Persephone	Dame Felicitas Corrigan, Helen Waddell
1987	George Mackay Brown, The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories	Ruth Dudley Edwards, Victor Gollancz: A Biography
1988	Piers Paul Read, A Season in the West	Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein, A Life: Young Ludwig
1989	James Kelman, A Disaffection	Ian Gibson, Federico García Lorca: A Life
1990	William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach	Claire Tomalin, The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
1991	Iain Sinclair, Downriver	Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin
1992	Rose Tremain, Sacred Country	Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe
1993	Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River	Richard Holmes, Dr Johnson and Mr Savage
1994	Alan Hollinghurst, The Folding Star	Doris Lessing, Under My Skin
1995	Christopher Priest, The Prestige	Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth
1996	Graham Swift, Last Orders Alice Thompson, Justine	Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life
1997	Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain	R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, Volume 1 – The Apprentice Mage 1865–1914
1998	Beryl Bainbridge, Master Georgie	Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More
1999	Timothy Mo, Renegade, or Halo2	Kathryn Hughes, George Eliot: The Last Victorian
2000	Zadie Smith, White Teeth	Martin Amis, Experience
2001	Sid Smith, Something Like a House	Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Volume 3 – Fighting for Britain 1937–1946
2002	Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections	Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future 1730–1810
2003	Andrew O'Hagan, Personality	Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: Volume 2 – The Power of Place
2004	David Peace, GB84	Jonathan Bate, John Clare: A Biography
2005	Ian McEwan, Saturday	Sue Prideaux, Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream
2006	Cormac McCarthy, The Road	Byron Rogers, The Man Who Went Into the West: The Life of R. S. Thomas
2007	Rosalind Belben, Our Horses in Egypt	Rosemary Hill, God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain
2008	Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture	Michael Holroyd, A Strange Eventful History
2009	A. S. Byatt, The Children's Book	John Carey, William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies
2010	Tatjana Soli, The Lotus Eaters	Hilary Spurling, Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China
2011	Padgett Powell, You and I	Fiona MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination
2012	Alan Warner, The Deadman's Pedal	Tanya Harrod, The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, Modern Pots, Colonialism and the Counterculture	Tim Price, The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning
2013	Jim Crace, Harvest	Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life	Rory Mullarkey, Cannibals
2014	Zia Haider Rahman, In the Light of What We Know	Richard Benson, The Valley: A Hundred Years in the Life of a Family	Gordon Dahlquist, Tomorrow Come Today
2015	Benjamin Markovits, You Don't Have to Live Like This	James Shapiro, 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear	Gary Owen, Iphigenia in Splott
2016	Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians	Laura Cumming, The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez	David Ireland, Cyprus Avenue
2017	Eley Williams, Attrib. and other stories	Craig Brown, Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret	Tanika Gupta, Lions and Tigers
2018	Olivia Laing, Crudo	Lindsey Hilsum, In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin	Clare Barron, Dance Nation
2019	Lucy Ellmann, Ducks, Newburyport	George Szirtes, The Photographer at Sixteen	Yasmin Joseph, J'Ouvert
2020	Shola von Reinhold, Lote	Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost in the Throat	N/A
2021	Keith Ridgway, A Shock	Amit Chaudhuri, Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music	N/A
2022	Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead	Daryl Pinckney, Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan	N/A
2023	Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy	Iman Mersal, Traces of Enayat Ian Penman, Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors
2024	Lucas Rijneveld, My Heavenly Favourite	Lamia Ziadé, My Great Arab Melancholy

Best of the James Tait Black (2012)

In 2012, a special prize was given called the 'Best of the James Tait Black'. The award celebrated the fiction winners over the past 93 years, as part of the 250th anniversary of the study of English Literature at the university. A shortlist of six previous winners competed for the title of Best. A judging panel of celebrity alumni and writers decided on the winner, which was announced on 6 December 2012 as Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus.
;Shortlist