Whitfield Book Prize

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The Whitfield Book Prize is a prize of £1,000 awarded annually by the Royal Historical Society to the best work on a subject of British or Irish history published within the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland during the calendar year. To be eligible for the award, the book must be the first history work published by the author.[1]

History of the prize

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The prize was founded in 1976 out of the bequest of Archibald Stenton Whitfield. Originally, the prize was £400; five years later, it was increased to £600.[2] Currently, the prize is £1,000.

Winners and shortlisted writers

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Source: Royal Historical Society

Ireland and the Great War, written by Niamh Gallagher, became the first book about Irish history to win the prize in 2020.[3]

1970s

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Whitfield Book Prize winners and finalists, 1977–1979
Year Author Title Result Ref.
1977 K. D. Brown John Burns Winner
1978 Marie Axton The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession Winner
1979 Patricia Crawford Denzil Holles, 1598–1680: A study of his Political Career Winner

1980s

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Whitfield Book Prize winners and finalists, 1980–1989
Year Author Title Result Ref.
1980 D. L. Rydz The Parliamentary Agents: A History Winner
1981 Scott M. Harrison The Pilgrimage of Grace in the Lake Counties, 1536–7 Winner
1982 Norman L. Jones Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559 Winner
1983 Peter Clark The English Alehouse: A social history, 1200–1830 Winner
1984 David Hempton Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750–1850 Winner
1985 K. D. M. Snell Annals of the Labouring Poor Winner
1986 Diarmaid MacCulloch Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County, 1500–1600 Winner
1987 Kevin M. Sharpe Criticism and Compliment: The politics of literature in the England of Charles I Winner
1988 J. H. Davis Reforming London, the London Government Problem, 1855–1900 Winner
1989 A. G. Rosser Medieval Westminster, 1200–1540 Winner

1990s

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Whitfield Book Prize winners and finalists, 1990–1999
Year Author Title Result Ref.
1990 Duncan M. Tanner Political change and the Labour party, 1900–1918 Winner
1991 Tessa Watt Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 Winner
1992 Christine Carpenter Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401 -1499 Winner
1993 Jeanette M. Neeson Commoners: common right; enclosure and social change in England, 1700- 1820 Winner
1994 Vic Gatrell The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English people, 1770–1868 Winner
1995 Kathleen Wilson The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 Winner
1996 Paul D. Griffiths Youth and Authority Formative Experience in England, 1560–1640 Winner
1997 Christopher Tolley Domestic Biography: the legacy of evangelicalism in four nineteenth-century families Winner
1998 Amanda Vickery The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England Winner
1999 John Walter Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers Winner

2000s

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Whitfield Book Prize winners and finalists, 2000–2009
Year Author Title Result Ref.
2000 Adam Fox Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 Winner
2001 John Goodall God's House at Ewelme: Life, Devotion and Architecture in a Fifteenth Century Almshouse Winner
Frank Salmon Building on Ruins: The Rediscovery of Rome and English Architecture Winner
2002 Ethan H. Shagan Popular Politics and the English Reformation Winner
2003 Christine Peters Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England Winner
2004 M.J.D. Roberts Making English Morals: Voluntary Association and Moral reform in England, 1787–1886 Winner
2005 Matt Houlbrook Queer London Winner
2006 Kate Fisher Birth Control, Sex and Marriage in Britain, 1918–1960 Winner
2007 Stephen Baxter The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England Winner
Duncan Bell The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 Winner
2008 Stephen M. Lee George Canning and Liberal Toryism, 1801–1827 Winner
Frank Trentmann Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society in Modern Britain Winner
2009 Nicholas Draper The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery Winner

2010s

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Whitfield Book Prize winners and finalists, 2010–2011
Year Author Title Result Ref.
2010 Arnold Hunt The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590–1640 Winner
2011 Jacqueline Rose Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 Winner
2012 Ben Griffin The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture and the Struggle for Women's Rights Winner
2013 Scott Sowerby Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution Winner
2014 Dating changed from "year published" to "year of award"
2015 John Sabapathy Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170-1300 Winner
2016 Aysha Pollnitz Princely Education in Early Modern Britain Winner
2017 William M. Cavert The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City Winner
Alice Taylor The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124-1290 Winner
2018 Brian N. Hall Communications and British Operations on the Western Front, 1914-1918 Winner
2019 Ryan Hanley Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.1770-1830 Winner

2020s

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Whitfield Book Prize winners and finalists, 2020–2029
Year Author Title Result Ref.
2020 Niamh Gallagher[a] Ireland and the Great War: A Social and Political History Winner [4]
Kieran Connell Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain Shortlist [4]
Johanna Dale Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century: Male and Female Accession Rituals in England, France and the Empire Shortlist [4]
Frances Houghton The Veterans’ Tale. British Military Memoirs of the Second World War Shortlist [4]
Charlie Laderman Sharing the Burden. The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order Shortlist [4]
Rob Waters Thinking Black: Britain, 1964–1985 Shortlist [4]
2021 Jackson Armstrong England's Northern Frontier: Conflict and Local Society in the Fifteenth-Century Scottish Marches Winner [5]
Lauren Working The Making of an Imperial Polity. Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis Winner [5]
Henry Bainton History and the Written Word: Documents, Literacy, and Language in the Age of the Angevins Shortlist [5]
Sarah Goldsmith Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour Shortlist [5]
Thomas Leahy The Intelligence War against the IRA Shortlist [5]
Fionnuala Walsh Irish Women and the Great War Shortlist [5]
2022 Kristen D. Hussey Imperial Bodies in London. Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 Winner [6]
Emily Baughan Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire Shortlist [6]
Laura Carter Histories of Everyday Life: The Making of Popular Social History in Britain, 1918-1979 Shortlist [6]
Tracy Collins Female Monasticism in Medieval Ireland: An Archaeology Shortlist [6]
Harriet Lyon Memory and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Early Modern England Shortlist [6]
Sherra Murphy ‘The First National Museum’: Dublin's Natural History Museum in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Shortlist [6]
2023 Síobhra Aiken Spiritual Wounds. Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War Winner [7]
James D. Fisher The Enclosure of Knowledge: Books, Power and Agrarian Capitalism in Britain, 1660–1800 Shortlist [7]
Sarah Fox Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England Shortlist [7]
Kate Gibson Illegitimacy, Family, and Stigma in England, 1660-1834 Shortlist [7]
Bronagh Ann McShane Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700 Shortlist [7]
Jonathan R. Topham Reading the Book of Nature: How Eight Best Sellers Reconnected Christianity and the Sciences on the Eve of the Victorian Age Shortlist [7]
2024 To be announced July 2024[8] Winner

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Gallagher published the first ever work on Irish history to win the Whitfield Book prize

References

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  1. ^ "Whitfield Prize". Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  2. ^ "Whitfield Prize". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 33: 233. 1983. doi:10.1017/s0080440100015681.
  3. ^ "Niamh Gallagher's Ireland and the Great War wins the Royal Historical Society's 2020 Whitfield Prize | Faculty of History University of Cambridge". www.hist.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 June 2024.
  4. ^ a b c d e f royalhistsoc. "RHS Whitfield Book Prize – The 2020 Shortlist | Historical Transactions". Retrieved 15 June 2024.
  5. ^ a b c d e f royalhistsoc. "RHS Whitfield Book Prize – the 2021 Shortlist | Historical Transactions". Retrieved 15 June 2024.
  6. ^ a b c d e f royalhistsoc. "RHS Whitfield Book Prize – the 2022 Shortlist | Historical Transactions". Retrieved 15 June 2024.
  7. ^ a b c d e f royalhistsoc. "RHS WHITFIELD BOOK PRIZE – THE 2023 SHORTLIST | Historical Transactions". Retrieved 15 June 2024.
  8. ^ "Whitfield Book Prize | RHS". royalhistsoc.org. Retrieved 15 June 2024.