James Tait Black Memorial Prize - History

History

Four winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature received the James Tait Black earlier in their careers; Sir William Golding, Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee each collected the James Tait Black for fiction, whilst Doris Lessing took the prize for biography. In addition to these literary Nobels, Sir Ronald Ross, whose 1923 autobiography Memoirs, Etc. received the biography prize, was already a Nobel Laureate, having been awarded the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on malaria.

Other major literary figures to receive the fiction award include D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, Arnold Bennett, Bruce Chatwin, John Buchan, Robert Graves, Arthur Waley, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Muriel Spark, J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, Elizabeth Bowen, John Berger, Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Salman Rushdie and William Boyd. Recipients of the biography award include John Buchan, Antonia Fraser, Richard Ellmann, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Claire Tomalin, Diarmaid MacCulloch, R. F. Foster, Martin Amis and John Carey.

More recent winners of note include Alan Hollinghurst, Graham Swift, Beryl Bainbridge, Zadie Smith, Andrew O'Hagan, David Peace, Ian McEwan, Rosalind Belben, Sebastian Barry and A. S. Byatt, all of whom have received the fiction prize in the course of the last two decades.

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