The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are awards given to books written in the English language. These prizes, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are the oldest literary awards in Britain. Located at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, United Kingdom, the prizes were started in 1919 by Janet Coats Black to honor her late husband, James Tait Black, who was a partner at the publishing company A & C Black Ltd. The prizes are given in two categories: Fiction and Biography. A Drama prize was given from 2013 to 2019.
History
The James Tait Black prize was created without much public attention. At first, there was little interest from newspapers or publishers because Edinburgh was far from the main literary areas of the country. The person who decided the winner was the Regius Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh.
Four people who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature received the James Tait Black prize before their Nobel wins. William Golding, Nadine Gordimer, and J. M. Coetzee each won the James Tait Black prize for fiction. Doris Lessing won the prize for biography. In addition, Sir Ronald Ross, whose autobiography Memoirs, Etc. (1923) won the biography prize, had already been awarded the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on malaria.
In 2012, a new category for Drama was added to the James Tait Black prize. The first winner of this category was announced in August 2013. The drama prize was paused after the 2019 award due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As of February 2026, the drama prize remains paused.
Selection process and prize administration
The winners are chosen by research and teaching staff in the Department of English and Scottish Literature at the university. These staff members are helped by postgraduate students during the shortlisting phase, a process that gives the prizes a sense of importance. In 2006, when Cormac McCarthy won one of the prizes, his publisher praised the selection process. The publisher noted that since the judging panel did not include sponsors or media or literary figures, the decisions were made by "students and professors, whose only real goal is to choose great books and great writing." The original funding for the prizes is now supported by the university, which caused the total prize money to increase from the 2005 awards. Each of the two annual prizes—one for fiction and one for biography—is worth £10,000. A small committee, which includes Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, and James Naughtie, advises the university on the development and management of the Prize. In August 2007, the prize ceremony was held for the first time at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
For the book prizes, works of fiction and biographies must be written in English. The author's nationality is not important, but the book must be first published (or co-published) in Britain during the year of the award. An author can only win each prize once. However, an author may win both prizes in the same year.
For the drama category, the work must be originally written in English, Gaelic, or Welsh. It must have been first performed during the previous calendar year, have a performance time of more than one hour, and have been shown at least seven times by a professional theatre company.
Best of the James Tait Black (2012)
In 2012, a special award named the "Best of the James Tait Black" was given, in addition to the regular prize for that year. This award honored fiction winners from the past 93 years as part of the 250th anniversary of the study of English Literature at the university. Six previous winners were chosen as finalists for the Best title. A group of judges, including famous alumni and writers, selected the winner. The winner was announced on December 6, 2012, and was Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus.
- Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (1984)
- Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter (1948)
- James Kelman, A Disaffection (1989)
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)
- Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River (1993)
- Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate (1965)