Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, United Kingdom, the prizes were founded by Mrs Janet Coutts Black in memory of her late husband, James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd.

Notable and recent winners

Four Nobel winners have been recognised by the James Tait Black earlier in their careers. Sir William Golding, Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee each collected the fiction award, whilst Doris Lessing took the prize for biography prior to receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. 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. Other major literary figures to receive the award include D. H. Lawrence, Arnold Bennett, John Buchan, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Muriel Spark, J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble and Salman Rushdie.

More recent winners of note include Graham Swift, Zadie Smith, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, each of whom have received either the fiction or biography prize in the course of the last decade. The most recent winners (for books published in 2007) were Rosalind Belben for Our Horses in Egypt and Rosemary Hill for God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain.

Selection process and prize administration

The winners are chosen by the Professor of English Literature at the University, who is assisted by PhD students in the shortlisting phase, a structure which is seen to lend the prizes a considerable gravitas. At the award of the 2006 prizes, Cormac 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 £6,000 to £20,000 for the 2005 awards. This increase made the two annual prizes, one for fiction and the other for biography, the largest literary prizes on offer in Scotland. 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

Only those works of fiction and biographies written in English and first published in Britain in the 12 month period prior to the submission date are eligible for the award. Both prizes may go to the same author, but neither prize can be awarded to the same author on more than one occasion.

Complete list of Winners

Year	Fiction Award	Year	Biography Award
1919	Hugh Walpole, The Secret City	1919	Henry Festing Jones, Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835-1902) - A Memoir
1920	D. H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl	1920	G. M. Trevelyan, Lord Grey of the Reform Bill
1921	Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget	1921	Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria
1922	David Garnett, Lady into Fox	1922	Percy Lubbock, Earlham
1923	Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps	1923	Sir Ronald Ross, Memoirs, Etc.
1924	E. M. Forster, A Passage to India	1924	Rev. William Wilson, The House of Airlie
1925	Liam O'Flaherty, The Informer	1925	Geoffrey Scott, The Portrait of Zelide
1926	Radclyffe Hall, Adam's Breed	1926	Reverend Dr H. B. Workman, John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church
1927	Francis Brett Young, Portrait of Clare	1927	H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce, Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, O.M.
1928	Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man	1928	John Buchan, Montrose
1929	J. B. Priestley, The Good Companions	1929	Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer: or The Life of Cowper
1930	E. H. Young, Miss Mole	1930	Francis Yeats-Brown, Lives of a Bengal Lancer
1931	Kate O'Brien, Without My Cloak	1931	J. Y. R. Greig, David Hume
1932	Helen de Guerry Simpson, Boomerang	1932	Stephen Gwynn, The Life of Mary Kingsley
1933	A. G. Macdonell, England, Their England	1933	Violet Clifton, The Book of Talbot
1934	Robert Graves, I, Claudius and Claudius the God	1934	J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth
1935	L. H. Myers, The Root and the Flower	1935	Raymond Wilson Chambers, Thomas More
1936	Winifred Holtby, South Riding	1936	Edward Sackville West, A Flame in Sunlight: The Life and Work of Thomas de Quincey
1937	Neil M. Gunn, Highland River	1937	Lord Eustace Percy, John Knox
1938	C. S. Forester, A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours	1938	Sir Edmund Chambers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1939	Aldous Huxley After Many a Summer Dies the Swan	1939	David C. Douglas, English Scholars
1940	Charles Morgan, The Voyage	1940	Hilda F. M. Prescott, Spanish Tudor: Mary I of England
1941	Joyce Cary, A House of Children	1941	John Gore, King George V
1942	Arthur Waley, Translation of Monkey by Wu Cheng'en	1942	Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, Henry Ponsonby: Queen Victoria's Private Secretary
1943	Mary Lavin, Tales from Bective Bridge	1943	G. G. Coulton, Fourscore Years
1944	Forrest Reid, Young Tom	1944	C. V. Wedgwood, William the Silent
1945	L. A. G. Strong, Travellers	1945	D. S. MacColl, Philip Wilson Steer
1946	Oliver Onions, Poor Man's Tapestry	1946	Richard Aldington, A Life of Wellington: The Duke
1947	L. P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda	1947	Rev. C. C. E. Raven, English Naturalists from Neckham to Ray
1948	Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter	1948	Percy A. Scholes, The Great Dr Burney
1949	Emma Smith, The Far Cry	1949	John Connell, W. E. Henley
1950	Robert Henriques, Through the Valley	1950	Cecil Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale
1951	Chapman Mortimer, Father Goose	1951	Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen
1952	Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms	1952	G. M. Young, Stanley Baldwin
1953	Margaret Kennedy, Troy Chimneys	1953	Carola Oman, Sir John Moore
1954	C. P. Snow, The New Men and The Masters	1954	Keith Feiling, Warren Hastings
1955	Ivy Compton-Burnett, Mother and Son	1955	R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Thomas Gray
1956	Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond	1956	St John Greer Ervine, George Bernard Shaw
1957	Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's	1957	Maurice Cranston, Life of John Locke
1958	Angus Wilson, The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot	1958	Joyce Hemlow, The History of Fanny Burney
1959	Morris West, The Devil's Advocate	1959	Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh
1960	Rex Warner, Imperial Caesar	1960	Canon Adam Fox, The Life of Dean Inge
1961	Jennifer Dawson, The Ha-Ha	1961	M. K. Ashby, Joseph Ashby of Tysoe
1962	Ronald Hardy, Act of Destruction	1962	Meriol Trevor, Newman: The Pillar and the Cloud and Newman: Light in Winter
1963	Gerda Charles, A Slanting Light	1963	Georgina Battiscombe, John Keble: A Study in Limitations
1964	Frank Tuohy, The Ice Saints	1964	Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R.I.
1965	Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate	1965	Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: The Later Years 1803-1850
1966	Christine Brooke-Rose, Such, and Aidan Higgins, Langrishe, Go Down	1966	Geoffrey Keynes, The Life of William Harvey
1967	Margaret Drabble, Jerusalem The Golden	1967	Winifred Gérin, Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius
1968	Maggie Ross, The Gasteropod	1968	Gordon Haight, George Eliot
1969	Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout	1969	Antonia Fraser, Mary, Queen of Scots
1970	Lily Powell, The Bird of Paradise	1970	Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston
1971	Nadine Gordimer, A Guest of Honour	1971	Julia Namier, Lewis Namier
1972	John Berger, G	1972	Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf
1973	Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince	1973	Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great
1974	Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur: or, The Prince of Darkness	1974	John Wain, Samuel Johnson
1975	Brian Moore, The Great Victorian Collection	1975	Karl Miller, Cockburn's Millennium
1976	John Banville, Doctor Copernicus	1976	Ronald Hingley, A New Life of Chekhov
1977	John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy	1977	George Painter, Chateaubriand: Volume 1 - The Longed-For Tempests
1978	Maurice Gee, Plumb	1978	Robert Gittings, The Older Hardy
1979	William Golding, Darkness Visible	1979	Brian Finney, Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography
1980	J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians	1980	Robert B. Martin, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart
1981	Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, and Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast	1981	Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell: Unicorn Among Lions
1982	Bruce Chatwin, On The Black Hill	1982	Richard Ellmann, James Joyce
1983	Jonathan Keates, Allegro Postillions	1983	Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years
1984	J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun, and Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus	1984	Lyndall Gordon, Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life
1985	Robert Edric, Winter Garden	1985	David Nokes, Jonathan Swift: A Hypocrite Reversed
1986	Jenny Joseph, Persephone	1986	Dame Felicitas Corrigan, Helen Waddell
1987	George Mackay Brown, The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories	1987	Ruth Dudley Edwards, Victor Gollancz: A Biography
1988	Piers Paul Read, A Season in the West	1988	Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein, A Life: Young Ludwig (1889-1921)
1989	James Kelman, A Disaffection	1989	Ian Gibson, Federico García Lorca: A Life
1990	William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach	1990	Claire Tomalin, The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
1991	Iain Sinclair, Downriver	1991	Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin
1992	Rose Tremain, Sacred Country	1992	Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe
1993	Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River	1993	Richard Holmes, Dr Johnson and Mr Savage
1994	Alan Hollinghurst, The Folding Star	1994	Doris Lessing, Under My Skin
1995	Christopher Priest, The Prestige	1995	Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth
1996	Graham Swift, Last Orders, and Alice Thompson, Justine	1996	Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life
1997	Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain	1997	R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, Volume 1 - The Apprentice Mage 1965-1914
1998	Beryl Bainbridge, Master Georgie	1998	Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More
1999	Timothy Mo, Renegade, or Halo2	1999	Kathryn Hughes, George Eliot: The Last Victorian
2000	Zadie Smith, White Teeth	2000	Martin Amis, Experience
2001	Sid Smith, Something Like a House	2001	Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Volume 3 - Fighting for Britain 1937-1946
2002	Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections	2002	Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future 1730-1810
2003	Andrew O'Hagan, Personality	2003	Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: Volume 2 - The Power of Place
2004	David Peace, GB84	2004	Jonathan Bate, John Clare: A Biography
2005	Ian McEwan, Saturday	2005	Sue Prideaux, Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream (Edvard Munch)
2006	Cormac McCarthy, The Road	2006	Byron Rogers, The Man Who Went into the West: The life of R.S. Thomas (R.S. Thomas)
2007	Rosalind Belben, Our Horses in Egypt	2007	Rosemary Hill, God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain
2008	Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture	2008	Michael Holroyd, A Strange Eventful History

Notes

External links

• James Tait Black Prizes homepage, University of Edinburgh
• Windows Media video report of the 2007 James Tait Black Prize ceremony
• James Tait Black Prizes homepage, University of Edinburgh
• New Statesman article on the James Tait Black and Booker prizes
• Most honored books of the James Tait Black Prize shortlists
• James Tait Black feature on the BBC Radio 4's 'Open Book' (includes audio link)