The Hawthornden Prize, the oldest literary prize in Britain, was founded in 1919 by Alice Warrender in commemoration of the Scottish poet William Drummond of Hawthornden. Administered by the Hawthornden Trust, and sponsored by Drue Heinz, the prize of £10,000 is awarded to "the best work of imaginative literature published in the preceding year". The term "imaginative literature" has in the past been interpretated by the judges in an extremely broad and liberal fashion as the past winners include works of non-fiction as well as fiction.
Winners of the Hawthornden Prize
- 1919 - Edward Shanks, The Queen of China
- 1920 - John Freeman, Poems New and Old
- 1921 - Romer Wilson, The Death of Society
- 1922 - Edmund Blunden, The Shepherd
- 1923 - David Garnett, Lady Into Fox
- 1924 - Ralph Hale Mottram, The Spanish Farm
- 1925 - Sean O'Casey, Juno and the Paycock
- 1926 - Vita Sackville-West, The Land
- 1927 - Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter
- 1928 - Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
- 1929 - David Cecil, The Stricken Deer: or The Life of Cowper
- 1930 - Geoffrey Dennis, The End of the World
- 1931 - Kate O'Brien, Without My Cloak
- 1932 - Charles Langbridge Morgan, The Fountain
- 1933 - Vita Sackville-West, Collected Poems
- 1934 - James Hilton, Lost Horizon
- 1935 - Robert Graves, I, Claudius
- 1936 - Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion
- 1937 - Ruth Pitter, A Trophy of Arms
- 1938 - David Jones, In Parenthesis
- 1939 - Christopher Hassall, Penthesperon
- 1940 - James Pope-Hennessy, London Fabric
- 1941 - Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
- 1942 - John Llewellyn Rhys, England is My Village
- 1943 - Sidney Keyes, The Cruel Solstice and The Iron Laurel
- 1944 - Martyn Skinner, Letters to Malaya
No award was made for the years 1945 to 1957
No award was made in 1959
No award was made in 1966
No award was made for the years 1971 to 1973
- 1974 - Oliver Sacks, Awakenings
- 1975 - David Lodge, Changing Places
- 1976 - Robert Nye, Falstaff
- 1977 - Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia
- 1978 - David Cook, Walter
- 1979 - P. S. Rushforth, Kindergarten
- 1980 - Christopher Reid, Arcadia
- 1981 - Douglas Dunn, St. Kilda's Parliament
- 1982 - Timothy Mo, Sour Sweet
- 1983 - Jonathan Keates, Allegro Postillions
No award was made for the years 1984 to 1987
- 1988 - Colin Thubron, Behind the Wall
- 1989 - Alan Bennett, Talking Heads
- 1990 - Kit Wright, Short Afternoons
- 1991 - Claire Tomalin, The Invisible Woman
- 1992 - Ferdinand Mount, Of Love and Asthma
- 1993 - Andrew Barrow, The Tap Dancer
- 1994 - Tim Pears, In the Place of Fallen Leaves
- 1995 - James Michie, The Collected Poems
- 1996 - Hilary Mantel, An Experiment in Love
- 1997 - John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure
- 1998 - Charles Nicholl, Somebody Else
- 1999 - Antony Beevor, Stalingrad
- 2000 - Michael Longley, The Weather in Japan
- 2001 - Helen Simpson, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life
- 2002 - Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath
- 2003 - William Fiennes, The Snow Geese
- 2004 - Jonathan Bate, John Clare: A Biography
- 2005 - Justin Cartwright, The Promise of Happiness
- 2006 - Alexander Masters Stuart, A Life Backwards
References
http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/hawthornden.html
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/info/prizes.php?action=3&przid=68