For official details, click here.
THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW is again partnering with the University of Kansas to publish the winner of the 2012 Trollope Prize essay competition. The graduate winner will receive a $2,000 award and a hardcover copy of a Trollope novel. In addition to publishing the winning essay, The Fortnightly Review will also provide an additional modest honorarium.
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The topic: “Trollope and His World.” According to the Trollope Prize website, submissions may include “essays focusing exclusively on the works of Anthony Trollope; comparative essays on Trollope and other writers; essays examining Trollope’s work and career in the larger context of Victorian history, culture and society; historical or literary essays on topics central to Trollope’s work and illuminated by his work; or essays on the reception of Trollope’s work or on his larger cultural influence. The work and career of Anthony Trollope must be a major focus of the essay.”
The Prize is an international competition sponsored by the university’s English Department and the Hall Center for the Humanities. It was launched to call attention to Trollope’s important contributions to literature, which are considerable – the “Barsetshire” and “Palliser” novels, for example, as well as founding The Fortnightly Review in 1865 (see Mrs. W. L. Courtney’s account here). His novel, The Belton Estate, was serialized in the Fortnightly, beginning with the first number.
The Prize committee notes that although “he is one of the most important writers in the Victorian period and in the history of the novel, his novels are often overlooked today. The Prize is designed to help promote the study of Trollope in college classrooms and to encourage student engagement with both Trollope’s work and Victorian literary history through their own intensive research and writing.”
The Prize’s logo (above) commemorates one of Trollope’s non-literary accomplishments: he was the first to recommend the use in the UK of the Post Office’s celebrated cast-iron letterboxes in 1852 while employed as a Surveyor’s Clerk.
Essays must be received by June 1, 2012; the announcement of winners will be in August 2012. There is also an undergraduate competition. Both competitions are described here. For a .pdf announcement suitable for posting click here.
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Update:
• First Trollope Prize-winning essays announced.
[From the official committee announcement] – WE ARE PLEASED TO announce the winners of the 2011 Trollope Prize in its inaugural year at the University of Kansas.
The winner of the graduate competition is “The Intensive and Extensive Worlds of Anthony Trollope’s Framley Parsonage,” written by Lucy Sheehan, a graduate student at Columbia University. Sheehan will receive a $2000 honorarium as well as a hardback copy of one of Trollope’s novels. In addition, her essay has been published by The Fortnightly Review, which has also provided an additional monetary reward. The judges noted that Sheehan’s essay successfully “enters the current critical conversation about the nature and effects of space and place in Victorian literary texts, especially how portrayals of space represent or embody ethical positions,” and praised it as a “well-researched, readable, and insightful” text.
Special commendation in the graduate competition goes to “Trollope and the Hunt for West Country Identity,” written by Heather Miner, a graduate student at Rice University.
The winner of the undergraduate competition is “‘More awful in his silence’: Speech and Male Power in Can You Forgive Her?” written by Katie Blankenau of the University of Kansas. Blankenau will receive a $1000 honorarium as well as a hardback copy of one of Trollope’s novels. Her adviser is Ann Wierda Rowland. The judges called Blankenau’s essay “exceptionally well-written and polished,” suggesting that it read “more like a graduate student or faculty article than an undergraduate paper.”
The runner-up in this year’s undergraduate competition is “‘The Chase of Chaldicotes is to vanish from the earth’s surface’: Loss of the Pastoral in Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire,” written by Alyssa Parker of the College of William & Mary. Parker’s adviser is Deborah Denenholz Morse.
The judging for this year’s competition was conducted by Dorice Williams Elliott, Associate Professor of English at the University of Kansas; Andrew H. Miller, Professor of English and Director of the Victorian Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington and co-editor of Victorian Studies; and Helena Michie, Professor of English and Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor in Humanities at Rice University. All entries in the competition were read and judged anonymously with respect to both the entrants’ names and their institutional affiliations.
The Trollope Prize is administered by the English department at the University of Kansas, with support from the Hall Center for the Humanities. It is awarded annually to the best undergraduate and graduate essays in English on the works of Anthony Trollope. The Prize was established to focus attention on Trollope’s work and career; though he is one of the most important writers in the Victorian period and in the history of the novel, his novels are often overlooked today. The Prize is designed to help promote the study of Trollope in college classrooms and to encourage student engagement with both Trollope’s work and Victorian literary history through their own intensive research and writing.
The deadline for the competition is June 1, 2012. For more on the Trollope Prize, visit trollopeprize.ku.edu.
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