Talk:List of winners of the National Book Award

Untitled

This list is split from National Book Award in a sense. That article history, discussion (Talk:National Book Award#children), and discussion edit history may be relevant here.

Paperbacks missing

Copied here from Talk:National Book Award. -P64 2012-02-01

Are the paperback-winners of 1980's Mystery and 1981's Children's Book, Nonfiction category missing? -- 22:45, 11 January 2005‎ 212.66.64.60

Thanks for the six-year old tip!

Last month I added the 1980 Mystery paperback (by William F. Buckley; perhaps unseemly, if i understand correctly, he was the master of ceremonies and the event was recorded for his "Firing Line" television show)

Regarding the Children's Book, Nonfiction category/ies this extract from NBF Winners[1] is puzzling. --P64 (talk) 01:04, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Children’s Books (Fiction, Paperback)

...

Children’s Books (Nonfiction)

1982: A Penguin Year by Susan Bonners
1983: Chimney Sweeps by James Cross Giblin

Children’s Books (Nonfiction, Hardcover)

1981: Oh, Boy! Babies! by Alison Cragin Herzig & Jane Lawrence Mali

Children’s Books (Picture Books, Hardcover)

...

Nominees

I'd be willing to help fill in details of nominees (from the NBA website) if someone knows how to create a table to do so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leonster (talk • contribs) 03:58, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect year of establishment (1935 to 1941 awards)

The awards were first announced in April 1936, not in 1950, as can be seen on this New York Times article (dated April 12, 1936). For a more complete discussion of the issue, see: Talk: National Book Award -Incorrect year of establishment. Best: HarryZilber (talk) 20:11, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

HarryZilber, Does the template {{incomplete}}[section] refer only to the fact that you have added 1939 to 1941 winners (three books), but there were other pre-war awards? If the list of pre-war awards is readily available but their placement in post-war categories is problematic, they should all be listed together in a subcategory for the early awards. Perhaps that should be done anyway, rather than allocate 1939-40 to nonfiction and 1941 to fiction.

(minutes later) I have uncertainly moved HarryZilber's incomplete section tag to the top of section Current categories. There I have double-listed the three 1939 to 1941 winners and I have inserted template {{incomplete list}} at the top of the Fiction and Nonfiction subsections. --P64 (talk) 23:26, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi P64: for elaboration, a short N.Y. Times article stated that awards were established in 1936, but there's a paucity of information on what categories were created at that time. Various references show there were at least two, Fiction and Nonfiction, but I'm unaware of any others. A telephone call made about two months ago to the organization running the awards was fruitless, as the gentleman I spoke with had only a cursory knowledge of the pre-1950 awards. Relating to the {incomplete|section} tags I placed, since the awards were established in 1936 there are obviously other winners missing in both the Fiction and Nonfiction categories. Best: HarryZilber (talk) 17:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I have access to historical NYT but not daily. There i have read that advance article (i presume) from April 1936 as well as NYT coverage of the announcements for four or five years, see section "References". Time ran out before i found coverage in some years. I have noted changing category names in the possibly unofficial words of NYT.

For now I have stated the scope from 1950 at the top of section "Current categories" with a link to the early awards (1935 to 1941) in a new section at the end. Since we (at least you and I) don't know that the 1950-2011 listings are incomplete, I have placed template {{incomplete}} in that new section alone. --P64 (talk) 16:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

1935 to 1941. Now I have incorporated NYT coverage of the awards announcement for the two missing years, 1938/39 and 1940/41. I doubt that the section remains incomplete but I neglected to delete the template.

Not listed here I have from the same source "close seconds" for 1937/38 and runners up for 1939/40.

For the general Non-fiction and Novel/Fiction, I plan to give some details, including category names implied by NYT coverage and runners up, at National Book Award for Nonfiction and National Book Award for Fiction.

Of course the main article needs update. --P64 (talk) 21:37, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

After my session today, this section is far more than a list. I have much expanded the explanation and expanded several listings by adding genre (for B Discovery and Most Original B); subitle, references. Someday soon I will cover the early history in the main articles. Then much of this extra prose and extra data should disappear here. I'm not sure how much. (For example, should the list place any B Discovery or Most Original B in a genre?) --P64 (talk) 21:52, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Previous categories

It may be useful here to provide some structure within this long section. It will be useful if someone can do it well. "Children's literature" is one obvious group. Now it isn't alphabetical, chronological by beginning year, or chronological by ending year. What is it?

One week later I have grouped with lower-level headings the multiple previous categories for History and Auto(biography); Science, Philosophy, and Religion; and Children's Literature. --P64 (talk) 18:36, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Same for Current and Miscellaneous 1980 to 1985 and I have ordered the groups by their inaugural years. --P64 (talk) 18:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

It must be useful at National Book Awards to say more about the historical scope of the awards. Now we have only the one-liner "Awards have been given in various other categories since 1950, but they have since been retired or subsumed into the remaining categories." and, later, a link to this list under its own name. --P64 (talk) 20:38, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Now I have a complete chronological overview of categories in user space, User:P64/FSF/National Book Award#Numbers and Categories overview table. (It is followed by an incomplete draft table of 1964–1983 nonfiction winners and finalists.) --P64 (talk) 19:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Links to wiki biographies

I have added links to the wiki-biographies (and House of Morgan) of people who are the subjects of award-winning biography or biographical history books. I suppose that was the intent of some previous editors but incompletely executed. I have tried to be consistent as follows.

• no second link from the title where the author is the subject (autobiography)

Lauren Bacall[author]; Lauren Bacall By Myself (i don't know the official title, that or with semicolon or without name)

• no link where we have an article on the book

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

• parenthetical link "(biography of |linked name|)" only where the name does not appear in the title or the name is the whole title

James Joyce (biography of James Joyce)

• link from the book title to the wiki-biog where the personal name is only part of the title. In six cases the personal name is the main title, followed by a subtitle. These six are most likely to be disagreeable because some wikipedia articles on books drop the book subtitles from the article titles.
  • Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian
  • Malcolm Lowry: A Biography
  • Max Perkins: Editor of Genius
  • Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist
  • Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller

--P64 (talk) 17:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Table format

In order to display some space between columns, i have added hard spaces to the longest entries in many fields. There may be a better way —not class=wikitable, which displays horizontal and vertical lines between rows and columns.

The Poetry table may use a different trick in the date field.

|'''1951||'''||[[Wallace Stevens]]||''[[The Auroras of Autumn]]''

--P64 (talk) 17:09, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Award years and publication years

As the National Book Foundation (and this list) currently dates the awards, 1950 to 1983 winners were published during the preceding calendar years 1949 to 1982. That is clear by reference to several of our articles on award winning authors or books.

interjection 2012-02-27 The change from winter/spring awards to previous year publications occurred 1983/1984. ... (continued)

The same sources show that winners of 1988 and later awards were published during the current years 1988 to 2011. (or perhaps during the preceding December, as the NBF says re current eligibility. Do publishers now avoid official publication of good books in December?)

So the four award cycles NBF now calls 1984 to 1987 covered five years of publication 1983 to 1987. Is that so? What happened, when?

My footnote to the 1987 award for fiction is a guess based on reported 1986 and 1987 publ dates for the winner Paco's Story and its famous rival Beloved, but in fact my quick searches show inconsistencies during these four award years.

By the way, for 1935 to 1941 publication dates, awards announced in the winter and presented in the spring of the following calendar year, contemporary coverage by The New York Times (my source for the winners) "names" the awards for the publication years or not at all. There is no association of the awards with the calendar years of their winter/spring announcement and presentation. --P64 (talk) 23:58, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

At least through 1975, when a temporary Committee on Awards Policy administered the awards in place of the defunct National Book Committee, the awards were presented at the annual convention of the book industry. See 1974 and 1975 coverage by The New York Times cited at National Book Award for Fiction. --P64 (talk) 00:54, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The change from winter/spring awards to previous year publications occurred 1983–1984. Initially the fall awards to current year publications covered November to October; there were no awards to 1983 publications, January to October.

The number of awards was cut from about 30 to three, of which only "Fiction" is covered continuously in one subsection of this page. So it seems reasonable that the point about "missing awards" to 1983 publications should be made within the Fiction list only.

Where 1984 and later award years do not match publication years, that indicatets either publication late in the preceding year (November/December in 1984, December in 2011, intermediate details unknown), or a "mistake" in some broad sense. --P64 (talk) 17:56, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

To me it seems reasonable that this point should be covered within the lists of winners and finalists for specific categories, such as National Book Award for Fiction, --P64 (talk) 17:56, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Hardcover and paperback, original and otherwise

In general fiction, none of the four winners of the paperback awards (1980 to 1983) were paperback originals. Unless some were originally published outside the US, all were previously eligible for NBA Fiction in their first editions. (Outside general fiction, some paperback editions of old books were eligible for the first time because their categories were new. Some may have been originals.)

For the general fiction, I have now distinguished the hardcover and paperback winners using the word "hard" (plain face) and a superscript note providing explanation of the paperback award winners, that none were originals, with dates of first publication.

Should the list make any such distinction? with any such footnotes?

At the other pole of opinion, should the paperback editions of old books be commingled with award-winning first editions? We don't commingle the first novels, first works of fiction, and other fiction subcategories. --P64 (talk) 01:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

See Talk: National Book Award for Fiction. --P64 (talk) 00:54, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Books winning two awards

We list Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian by John Clive and The Lives of the Cell by Lewis Thomas as 1974 and 1975 winners in two categories. (In this we follow the NBF website.)

1974. Contemporary coverage by The New York Times, 1974 Apr 11, names Clive's Macaulay for history and Douglas Day's Malcolm Lowry: A Biography for biography --and observes that Clive's Macaulay was a finalist for biography. (We don't follow this.)

--P64 (talk) 00:54, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard, won one 1979 award in its first edition and one 1980 award in its first paperback edition. (In this we follow the NBF website.)

The Notes now cover all three of these double-winning books. --P64 (talk) 18:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Section Repeat winners (with {{anchor}} for its former heading "Winners of multiple awards") incorporates these Books winning two awards as well as Authors of two award-winning books. --P64 (talk) 18:03, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Repeat winners

Section Repeat winners (with {{anchor}} for its former heading "Winners of multiple awards") covers both Books winning two awards and Authors of two award-winning books. (Only Saul Bellow has three books that won separately.)

My coverage of repeat winners has been errorprone, without resort to any comprehensive sortable list. Reliability is likely to be quite high now that I have completed coverage of NBAwards in all of our biographies of all winning authors. --P64 (talk) 18:03, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Split awards

In the first column of the tables (Award Year), today I marked many of the awards that were split --all of those that I noticed by eye or recalled reading about. In particular I tried a single superscript that is displayed "between the lines" that list the winning books, which are always listed on consecutive lines.

Perhaps the split awards should be handled by one Note that includes a table with multiple references. --P64 (talk) 00:01, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Almost five days ago I revised the list in a way that is obviously incomplete; inserted template {{underconstruction}}; consulted one of my mentors (User talk: Mirokado; and privately notified a frequent maintainer of this list (User talk: Green Cardamom).

The technical question is how to call refs 3 and 22, named nba1980s and nba1970s, within the explanatory notes.

Sections 9 and 10, Split awards and Notes are repetitive at the moment. One way to avoid the technique and fix the repetition is to cover only the "Other notes" in section 10 and merge the "Split awards" notes, with their use of refs 3 and 22, into section 9.

Does anyone else have an opinion about this alternative?

Can anyone answer the technical question? (I have read the templates documentation {{efn}}, {{notelist}}, {{reflist}} which did not help me on this point.)

--P64 (talk) 17:01, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I see that the alternative can be implemented reasonably well by linking the tables repeatedly to the entire Split awards section. Currently the latest such links would appear in section 5.3. Let me illustrate the approach from that point (here between two horizontal lines):

---

---

(5.3) Translation

1967	Gregory Rabassa	Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch
#s	Willard Trask	Casanova's History of My Life (first of 6 vols.)
1968	yada yada yada ...	Yada
1969	blah blah blah ...	Blah
...

(6) Early awards 1935–1941 --no change

(7) Graphics awards --no change

(8) Repeat winners --no change

The anchor 's' is defined here.

(9) Split awards

--Merge all coverage of split awards here, with ordinary calls to both Notes and Refs, perhaps beginning with solid prose such as this:

Some panels from designated multiple winners, beginning with two winners of the first Translation award in 1967, when there were 7 NBA winners in 6 award categories. After 1983, when there were 22 winners in 19 categories, the entire program was revamped and split awards were ruled out.[refs]

In all, there were multiple winners of X awards in the ten cycles 1967, 1971–75, and 1980–83, including three winners of the 1974 translation award.[ref]

... merge the current section with remaining material from first half of current Notes section, now under the bold heading Split awards

... whatever else we know or learn about split awards, such as the fact whether no/some/all cash prizes were literally split and no/some/all prizes were duplicated -- something that will be very good to learn and report in this list and in the main article, as it may show that the program was financially healthy at some time ...

(10) Notes --second half of the current Notes section, now under the bold heading Other

(11) References --no change

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---

At the moment I am inclined to this approach, rather than covering split awards partly in explanatory Notes, even if there is a technical solution to call refs within notes. --P64 (talk) 18:47, 6 February 2013 (UTC)