History of the prize
The prize was established through a bequest from Mrs Frida Mond in 1924. It was her intention to associate both the prize and a lecture with Sir Israel Gollancz, the first Secretary of the British Academy, 'in token of a highly valued old friendship and his effort to further these studies'. During Sir Israel’s lifetime, at his own request, the award was known as the Biennial Prize for English Literature, but after his death in 1930, it became the Sir Israel Gollancz Prize. The prize was first awarded in 1925.
Eligibility
Eligible nominations can be for any published work of sufficient value on subjects connected with Anglo-Saxon, early English language and literature, English philology, or the history of English language; or for original investigations connected with the history of English literature or the works of English writers, with preference for the earlier period.
How to nominate
Nominations for this award are open from 1 December to 31 January and may only be made by Fellows of the British Academy. Entries should be submitted electronically via this nomination form.
The deadline for submissions is 31 January each year. Nominations will be reviewed, and the winner selected, by the relevant panel.
If you have any queries submitting a nomination, please email [email protected].
2024 winner
Professor Aaron J. Kleist has been awarded the 2024 Sir Israel Gollancz Prize for his trilogy of publications on Ælfric of Eynsham from 2016, 2019, and 2022. These texts represent one of the most important contributions to Old English Studies of the last generation.
Raised in Saipan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, where he graduated secondary school on the pyramids, Aaron J. Kleist found his way to the University of Cambridge for doctoral studies under luminaries Professor Michael Lapidge FBA and Professor Andy Orchard FBA. Heeding their sage counsel against 'attempting to write a history of the Middle Ages beginning with the words "Slowly the earth began to cool"', Kleist instead focused on a topic likely to strain the most hardened devotees of the abstruse: Old English and Insular Latin homiletic exegesis, particularly as penned by one Ælfric of Eynsham. Seeking to stave off the soporific stupefaction of such research, academia loaded Kleist with duties at a teaching-intensive institution, Biola University in Greater Los Angeles. There he served as Chair of English, Associate Dean of Humanities, and Associate Provost of Academic Innovation, while teaching such courses as 'Monsters and Mayhem in the Middle Ages' and creating an interdisciplinary program involving over 30 professors in 16 disciplines. Throughout, however, his interest in Ælfric remained: not content with afflicting audiences himself with 110 presentations and invited lectures on medieval theology and digital editions, he enflamed others to do the same, organising 24 sessions at three international conferences as President of the Society for the Study of Anglo-Saxon Homiletics, and supervising a team of 42 faculty and students at 15 international institutions as the Director of the Digital Ælfric Project.
Grant agencies, besieged by Kleistian funding applications, desperately threw money at him in an attempt to direct his energies elsewhere. A National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship led him to Hughes Hall at Cambridge as a Visiting Scholar in 2004; an NEH Scholarly Editions Grant brought him to Clare Hall at Cambridge as a Visiting Fellow in 2008; Fulbright Senior Specialist awards sent him to Switzerland (2008) and Germany (2011) to teach Old English and digital editing; and additional Fulbright Specialist and Scholar awards directed him to Belarus (2018) and Bulgaria (2022) to consult on advanced digital pedagogy. In the process, in a slug-slow but alarmingly inexorable manner, he produced a series of studies on Ælfrician matters, including an edited collection of essays on 'The Old English Homily' (2007), a monograph on 'Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England' (2008), the 1.1-million-word Digital Ælfric (2008), 'The Chronology and Canon of Ælfric of Eynsham' (2019), and a two-volume set co-authored with Robert Upchurch on 'Ælfrician Homilies and Varia' (2022). In 2023, the University of Cambridge mercifully bestowed upon him a higher doctorate for such works, which sought (in his words) 'to uphold the standards I was taught, that their author might be known as a faithful son of the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic'.
"Members of the British Academy may be forgiven the impression that one of these is not like the others: Helmut Gneuss, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Whitelock, Aaron J. Kleist. By the grace of the Sir Israel Gollancz Prize Committee, however, the last joins these others, along with such pioneering scholars of Ælfric as Peter Clemoes and Malcolm Godden, as an honoured recipient of this award. If any recognition comes of carrying for a time the torch entrusted to me by Timothy Graham, Tom Hall, Michael Lapidge, Andy Orchard, and others far greater than I, however, these further acknowledgements must be made: the erudite encouragement of co-author Robert Upchurch, without whom 20 years of work would never have reached completion; the long-suffering support of my wife and children, whose lives have never been free from Ælfric; and the inspiration of Ælfric himself, who says that 'Ne mæg nan man naht to gode gedon buton Godes gife' ('No one can do anything good without God’s grace'). To you who have shown such grace, I am truly thankful: it is a privilege in small ways to supplement the enduring work of the British Academy."
- Professor Aaron Kleist, August 2024
Previous winners
2022 Professor David Lawton, Durham University
2021 The Gersum Project (Professor Richard Dance, University of Cambridge; Dr Sara M. Pons-Sanz, University of Nottingham; and Dr Brittany Schorn, University of Oxford)
2019 Professor David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania
2017 Dr Helmut Gneuss FBA, Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich
2015 Professor Ralph Hanna, University of Oxford
2013 Professor Leslie Lockett, Ohio State University
2011 Professor Jill Mann FBA, Honorary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford
2009 Professor Michael Lapidge FBA, Emeritus Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge
2007 Professor James Simpson
2005 Professor Patrick P O'Neill
2003 Professor Robert Lewis
2001 Professor Malcolm Godden and the late Professor Peter Clemoes