Extollager
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- Aug 21, 2010
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Hawthornden Prize - Wikipedia
One can see that "imaginative literature" is interpreted broadly, as winners have included novels, book-length poems, travels, biography, popular science, history, etc.
I observed that I have read several of these with particular enjoyment, so I think I'll look into some of the other winners -- with the important reservation that I am inclined to be skeptical right off the start about recent winners, let's say the past 15 years or so, without looking at them, just because there has been so much emphasis of late on political considerations that I am inclined to figure older books are likely to be better bets than new ones.
I have read the books by Dennis, Hilton, Graves, Waugh, Pitter (or at least most of the Pitter, in a collected poems volume), Greene, Skinner, Naipaul, Read, Chatwin, and Thubron -- and thought well of them all or indeed loved them. I have on hand a photocopy of Hassall's Penthesperon but haven't read it yet. By the way, the Romer Wilson book, The Death of Society, is not an essay but a novel (or is an essay in the form of a novel), from what I understand. Anyway, the prize givers evidently have often been on a wavelength that I like to tune in.
One can see that "imaginative literature" is interpreted broadly, as winners have included novels, book-length poems, travels, biography, popular science, history, etc.
I observed that I have read several of these with particular enjoyment, so I think I'll look into some of the other winners -- with the important reservation that I am inclined to be skeptical right off the start about recent winners, let's say the past 15 years or so, without looking at them, just because there has been so much emphasis of late on political considerations that I am inclined to figure older books are likely to be better bets than new ones.
I have read the books by Dennis, Hilton, Graves, Waugh, Pitter (or at least most of the Pitter, in a collected poems volume), Greene, Skinner, Naipaul, Read, Chatwin, and Thubron -- and thought well of them all or indeed loved them. I have on hand a photocopy of Hassall's Penthesperon but haven't read it yet. By the way, the Romer Wilson book, The Death of Society, is not an essay but a novel (or is an essay in the form of a novel), from what I understand. Anyway, the prize givers evidently have often been on a wavelength that I like to tune in.
