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T H E S O C I E T Y A N N O U N C E S The William L. Mitchell Prize
for |
| The Bibliographical Society of America invites
submissions for its third William L. Mitchell Prize for Bibliography or Documentary Work
on Early British Periodicals or Newspapers. The next competition has the deadline of 1
September 2008 and will consider works (including theses, articles, books, and electronic
resources) published after 31 December 2004. The winner of the William L. Mitchell Prize
will receive a cash award of $1,000 and a year's membership in the Society. The Mitchell Prize for research on British serials was endowed to honor William L. Mitchell, former librarian at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas, where he was curator of the Richmond P. and Marjorie N. Bond Collection of 18th-Century British Newspapers and Periodicals and of the Edmund Curll Collection. The Prize serves as an encouragement to scholars engaged in bibliographical scholarship on 18th-century periodicals published in English or in any language but within the British Isles and its colonies and former colonies. Submissions for the Mitchell Prize may concentrate on any periodicals or newspapers printed before 1800 in English-speaking countries, but should involve research into primary sources of historical evidence, such as the analysis of the physical objects, whether for establishing a text or understanding the history of the production, distribution, collecting, or reading of serial publications. For examples of the kind of scholarship falling within the Prize's survey, please see the descriptions of previous winners below. Eligible scholarship may take the form of a book or article, a Master's thesis or doctoral dissertation defended and approved, or research results distributed in another manner, such as on a World-Wide-Web site or a CD-ROM. Eligible scholarship must have been published or, if a dissertation or thesis, approved during the year of the deadline or the three previous calendar years. If a publication has an incorrect nominal date disqualifying it for submission but an actual date of publication within the prize period, it may be nominated with a letter by the publisher or editor testifying to the actual date of publication. Unpublished dissertations and theses must be accompanied by a letter from their authors' directors attesting to their having been approved. All scholars are eligible to apply for the Mitchell Prize without regard to their membership in the Bibliographical Society of America or any other society, and without regard to their citizenship or academic affiliation, degree, or rank. The Prize will be awarded to the author of a particular work of scholarship without regard to the author's prolonged or repeated contributions to the field. Since the Prize is designed to promote research on the history of the periodical and the periodical press, the Prize Committee encourages applications by young or junior scholars who have not as yet published extensively. Applicants may nominate themselves or be nominated by other persons, including publishers, journal editors, and dissertation and thesis directors. Applications must contain the following items: a letter of intent addressed to the "Mitchell Prize Committee," three copies of the work placed in nomination, a one-page curriculum vitae, and, if required, any documentation regarding the approval of a theses or a dissertation or confirming the date of a publication. Web-based nominations do not require the submission of three copies, but free access to the web-site and instructions regarding its use must be offered, along with a statement regarding plans for maintaining and/or archiving the website. Letters of recommendation are not requested. Applications should be addressed to: The Mitchell Prize Committee Submissions need be postmarked by 1 September 2008. Before the prize is awarded at the BSA's annual meeting, held in New York in late January 2009, the winner will be contacted in advance and invited to receive the award at the meeting. Questions regarding the award should be addressed to the Mitchell Prize Coordinator: Dr. James E. May PREVIOUS
RECIPIENTS OF William E. Rivers, 2006 The Bibliographical Society of America has awarded the second triennial William L. Mitchell Prize for Bibliography or Documentary Work on Early British Periodicals or Newspapers to William E. Rivers (English Department, University of South Carolina). Professor Rivers won for his edition of Nicholas Amhurst's Terrae-Filius or, The Secret History of the University of Oxford (1721-26), published by the University of Delaware Press in 2004. Terrae-Filius was originally published in 50 bi-weekly folios during 1721. Amhurst covered the Oxford community with particular attention to political disputes and debates that reflect broad national issues. Amhurst re-edited and oversaw the periodical's publication in a collected octavo edition in 1726 (it reprinted again that same year and posthumously in 1754). For the collected edition, Amhurst dropped three original essays, re-arranged the order of essays to unify similar subjects, altered numbers and dates to preserve chronology, added a preface and an entirely new essay (No. 50), and revised the substantives (such as by removing some criticism of King George I and his administration) and accidentals (such as by removing much capitalization). Professor Rivers' lengthy introduction provides a necessary introduction to the political context, without which a modern reader will fail to understand much within Terrae-Filius. In his introduction Rivers illuminates Amhurst's recurrent themes, the university's structure and academic life, social milieu, moral atmosphere, and political and religious activities. He also examines the evolution of the text, explaining his choice of the first collected edition as copy-text. His headnotes, footnotes, and appendices provide all that one might expect from a first-rate edition and more: emendations, a historical collation of variant readings in the text and mottos of the first three editions, the texts omitted from the collected edition, a table comparing the numbers and dates of the issues in original and collected editions, and a descriptive bibliography of the first four editions. Also included, with learned annotation, is Amhurst's own original appendix, a long letter from Amhurst to the Reverend Dr. Newton, Principal of Hart-Hall, casting him as a wrong-headed reformer. The edition concludes with Amhurst's own index and Rivers' general index. The edition is handsomely printed by the University of Delaware Press, with a facsimile of the title-page to the collected edition and a cover illustration reproducing Hogarth's frontispiece to the first collected edition; also, facsimile headpieces and other cut ornaments are reproduced from that edition. The three senior scholars on the Selection Committee for the Mitchell Prize unanimously chose Professor Rivers' edition of Amhurst periodical Terrae-Filius, or The Secret History of the University of Oxford. All considered Rivers' subject important. The largely neglected Nicholas Amhurst would later edit one of the century's most important and popular periodicals, The Craftsman. The Terrae-Filius is a valuable text for the study of Oxford and Whig-Jacobite conflicts that are a microcosm reflecting national tensions. One judge summed up this value succinctly: "The run of the periodical will continue to be mined not only for university history but also British political history." For, as another judge remarked, "Not only does Rivers tackle the political and educational content and context of the journal in a careful introduction, but he highlights important aspects of Amhurst's writing career as they relate to Terrae-Filius, and he sets out a clear bibliographical account of the periodical and its publishing history." The prize jury credits Rivers with a mastery of the periodical itself and secondary publications on Amhurst, his periodical, and Oxford itself. In the words of another judge, "Rivers' Introduction and its notes, as well as the notes to the text, reveal an in-depth knowledge of contemporary Oxford, its personalities, university statutes and practices, religion, politics, and society." The judges also praised Professor Rivers for his expert performance as an editor: "The edition by Rivers is a substantial achievement. His bibliographical and textual evidence is careful and clearly presented." All agree that William Rivers has reintroduced Amhurst's fascinating periodical to scholars, making it intellectually available for the first time since the age of its publication, in an edition that may prove to be definitive. Barbara L. Fitzpatrick, 2003 In January 2003 the Bibliographical Society of America awarded the first William L. Mitchell Prize for Bibliography or Documentary Work on Early British Periodicals or Newspapers to Barbara L. Fitzpatrick (English, University of New Orleans). Professor Fitzpatrick won for her essay "Physical Evidence for John Coote's Eighteenth-Century Periodical Proprietorships: The Examples of Coote's Royal Magazine (1759-71) and Smollett's British Magazine (1760-67)," published in Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, n.s. 11 (2000): 211-58. Fitzpatrick's essay demonstrates, with physical evidence, that The Royal Magazine and The British Magazine share type-settings for articles appearing in concurrent issues during 1761-1763. Surprisingly, in the earliest instance, the type settings for an article and a list of House of Common's members were first impressed for John Coote's Royal Magazine and then shipped to Archibald Hamilton's shop for use in printing Smollett's British Magazine. This discovery reveals Coote's partial ownership of the British Magazine before one would have suspected it, a partial ownership that Fitzpatrick also establishes by noting inserted advertisements for Coote's publications in the outer paper wrappers of the British Magazine. Fitzpatrick identifies seven articles in both magazines that were set with shared type. One of the most obvious cases of shared type, that occurring in April 1763 issues, resulted in pagination and catchword errors and an inappropriate press figure in the Royal Magazine, for the press failed to adapt two half-sheets of type set for the British Magazine before reimpressing them. Fitzpatrick also identifies many more shared concurrent articles not produced with shared settings and provides much information about John Coote's involvements in diverse periodicals. The Prize Selection Committee praised both the methodology and accomplishments of Professor Fitzpatrick's essay on Coote's involvement in The British Magazine and The Royal Magazine. As one judge remarked, "Fitzpatrick's article seems to me to represent the type of research appropriate to the aims of the Mitchell Prize: the observation and use of physical characteristics of the periodicals themselves to add significantly to knowledge about them. It takes previous research results into account, accepting them where they are sound and correcting them where they err. It is also felicitously written." Another judge agreed that it is "an example of bibliographical scholarship at its best, giving answers that only bibliographical scholarship can provide." The third judge characterized the essay as "an important article which actually does study periodicals, as opposed to just using them, and which sheds light far beyond the scope announced in the title.... The topic is fresh, and the synthesis is new." |
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