University English Book Prize 2014

Chair’s Report

The three shortlisted volumes were drawn from a strong set of entries. The excellent research published over the past year by early career colleagues is a good indicator of the health of the discipline of English. The three shortlisted volumes also represent something of the historical breadth and increasingly international reach of current of scholarship in English. They comprise a study of 16thc prison literature, an examination of authorial practices of revision from the modernist period, and an analysis of two writers who, under exile from Nazism, wrote in the English language rather than in their native German.

This last volume, Tamar Steinitz’s Translingual Identities and the self in Stefan Heym and Jokov Lind (published by Camden House) speaks to a growing interest within literary studies in translations of all kinds, illuminating the personal and ideological effects of crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries. Through her study of these two authors, one an exile from Nazi Germany, the other from Austria, Tamar Steinitz offers a very timely historical perspective on literary translingualism. Translingual Identities impressed the book prize judges as a detailed, scholarly and well-written book whose author ably deploys her familiarity with other languages and literary traditions to support her evaluation of work in English that draws on other languages and cultures.
Meanwhile, Ruth Ahnert’s book, The Rise of Prison Literature in the Sixteenth Century (CUP) also speaks to a recent swell of interest in literary studies in prison writing in several periods. It covers an exceptionally wide range of materials and will be a vital resource for anyone interested in prison writing in the 16thc – or indeed other periods: one of its achievements is that it nicely situates the 16thc in relation to current concerns such as Guantanamo Bay. Lucid and engaging, The Rise of Prison Literature in the Sixteenth Century also impressed the prize judges as an excellent first book.
Hannah Sullivan’s book, The Work of Revision (Harvard University Press), examines changing attitudes to the authorial work of revision, arguing for the crucial role of modernism in valorising the act of rewriting, and the extent to which this reshaped literary style. Her study shows not only that modernist writers had a unique taste for revising their work, but that this shift was prompted by practical changes in proofing and typesetting alongside aesthetic concerns about perfection, difficulty, and efficiency. Sullivan links modernist theories of production and consumption to genetic criticism, English as a university discipline, and contemporary creative practice to offer a deeply-researched and ground-breaking reappraisal of the period. The book prize judges were in agreement that The Work of Revision is an extraordinary book – let alone first book – and unanimous in awarding it the 2014 University English Early Careers Book Prize.