WH Smith Literary Award

{{short description|Prize originally for Commonwealth residents, awarded 1959–2005}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{more citations needed|date=November 2017}}

The WH Smith Literary Award was an award founded in 1959 by British high street retailer WH Smith to "encourage and bring international esteem to authors of the British Commonwealth". Originally open to all residents of the UK, the Commonwealth and Ireland, it later admitted foreign works in translation and works by US authors. The final three winners were Americans (Philip Roth, Donna Tartt and Richard Powers), and 2005 was the award's final year.[http://www.librarything.com/bookaward/WH%20Smith%20Literary%20Award WH Smith Literary Award at aLibraryThing]

The WH Smith Illustration Award ran from 1987 to 1994.

The WH Smith Mind-Boggling Book Award for children's literature ran from 1993 to 1996.

WH Smith sponsors the National Book Awards Children's Book of the Year (the "British Children's Book Award" through 2009).

Winners

class="wikitable sortable"

! Year !! Author !! Title

1959

| Patrick White || Voss

1960

| Laurie Lee || Cider With Rosie

1961

| Nadine Gordimer || Friday's Footprint

1962

| J. R. Ackerley || We Think the World of You

1963

| Gabriel Fielding || The Birthday King

1964

| Ernst Gombrich || Meditations on a Hobby-Horse

1965

| Leonard Woolf || Beginning Again

1966

| R. C. Hutchinson || A Child Possessed

1967

| Jean Rhys || Wide Sargasso Sea

1968

| V. S. Naipaul || The Mimic Men

1969

| Robert Gittings || John Keats

1970

| John Fowles || The French Lieutenant's Woman

1971

| Nan Fairbrother || New Lives, New Landscapes

1972

| Kathleen Raine || The Lost Country

1973

| Brian Moore || Catholics

1974

| Anthony Powell || Temporary Kings

1975

| Jon Stallworthy || Wilfred Owen

1976

| Seamus Heaney || North

1977

| Ronald Lewin || Slim: The Standardbearer

1978

| Patrick Leigh Fermor || A Time of Gifts

1979

| Mark Girouard || Life in the English Country House

1980

| Thom Gunn || Selected Poems 1950–1975

1981

| Isabel Colegate || The Shooting Party

1982

| George Clare || Last Waltz in Vienna

1983

| A. N. Wilson || Wise Virgin

1984

| Philip Larkin || Required Writing

1985

| David Hughes || The Pork Butcher

1986

| Doris Lessing || The Good Terrorist

1987

| Elizabeth Jennings || Collected Poems 1953–1985

1988

| Robert Hughes || The Fatal Shore

1989

| Christopher Hill || A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People: John Bunyan and His Church

1990

| V. S. Pritchett || A Careless Widow and Other Stories

1991

| Derek Walcott || Omeros

1992

| Thomas Pakenham || The Scramble for Africa

1993

| Michèle Roberts || Daughters of the House

1994

| Vikram Seth || A Suitable Boy

1995

| Alice Munro || Open Secrets

1996

| Simon Schama || Landscape and Memory

1997

| Orlando Figes || A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924

1998

| Ted Hughes || Tales from Ovid

1999

| Beryl Bainbridge || Master Georgie

2000

| Melvyn Bragg || The Soldier's Return

2001

| Philip Roth || The Human Stain

2002

| Ian McEwan || Atonement

2003

| Donna Tartt || The Little Friend

2004

| Richard Powers || The Time of Our Singing

2005

| Philip Roth || The Plot Against America

WH Smith Mind-Boggling Book Award

For a few years, W H Smith also offered a children's book award. The judges were children between nine and twelve, and the intention was to promote books which were "accessible to children in content and price, as well as offering a gripping read."{{Cite web |url=http://book.consumerhelpweb.com/awards/mindboggling/winners.htm |title=Mind-Boggling Book Award |access-date=2011-03-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111002191604/http://book.consumerhelpweb.com/awards/mindboggling/winners.htm |archive-date=2011-10-02 |url-status=dead }}

The winners were:

References