The Literary Encyclopedia 2024 Prizes

In a rapidly changing world, it is a great comfort to know that compelling works of literature – including those that are newly discovered and stretch our boundaries – continue to open windows into other times, places, and cultures. We are delighted with the quality of this year’s entries, which took us geographically from England to America to Iceland to Sicily to St. Dominique to Pakistan, and chronologically from the Middle Ages through early modern England to nineteenth-century America to contemporary South Asia. The judging process taught us that the ways in which we read and understand literary texts – even the definition of a literary text – are continually expanding, especially as we become more aware of traditionally underrepresented countries and communities. Such breadth is only fitting, given the coverage that the Literary Encyclopedia offers its readers.

We are grateful to the authors who submitted their books for consideration, and we appreciate the input we received from the scholars who shared their views with us, as well as the judging panel.

The winners for each prize are as follows:

Literatures originally written in English

Margaret H. Freeman, Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Art: A Cognitive Reading (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Literatures written in languages other than English

The prize is to be shared between

Scholarly editions of works originally in the English language

Hilary Emmett and Thomas Ruys Smith, A Juvenile Miscellany: An Anthology of Lydia Maria Child’s Writing for Children (UEA Publishing Project, 2023)

We hope that you delight in them as much as we do.