Reading List · Imaginative literature
The Hawthornden Prize is awarded each year to a British, Irish or British-based author for a book of “imaginative literature” in English published in the previous calendar year, whether poetry, a novel, history, biography or creative non-fiction. It was founded in 1919 by Alice Warrender and is, with the James Tait Black Prizes, one of Britain’s oldest literary awards. It is now run by the Hawthornden Foundation, established by Drue Heinz, and does not accept submissions. The prize is worth £25,000.
By Lisanne Swart · 86 winners since 1919 · Poetry, fiction and non-fiction · All literary prizes · Last reviewed 28 October 2026
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Quick answer
The Hawthornden Prize is a £25,000 annual award, founded in 1919, for a work of imaginative literature in English by a British, Irish or British-based author. It is run by the Hawthornden Foundation, and the latest winner is Caleb Klaces’s Mr Outside (2026).
How this page chooses
The timeline at the top lists every winner, all 91 of them. The latest fifteen have their own entry further down, oldest first; the titles in the timeline that you can click are those.
Under each book is a line of plain fact about the book or its author, and nothing that cannot be checked.
Oldest first. The line in red is a fact about the book or its author, not an opinion about it.
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Subtitled A Memoir in Blindness, the book describes the two years in which blepharospasm kept McWilliam’s eyelids closed, leaving her functionally blind; she dictated it to a young friend.
McWilliam’s novel Debatable Land won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1994.
During a dinner party in Greenwich, a guest named Miles Garth locks himself in the spare bedroom and refuses to leave; the novel is told in four parts by people connected to him.
It was longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Poems ranging from outer space and medieval travel to imagined alien landscapes, which give attention to the overlooked, such as former residents of a drowned Welsh valley and extinct animals.
It is McKendrick’s sixth poetry collection, published by Faber in 2012.
Dear Boy is Emily Berry’s first full collection of poems, published by Faber & Faber in 2013.
It also won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2014.
In a small Irish town in the late 1960s, Nora Webster, a widow raising four children, tries to rebuild her life after the death of her husband.
It was shortlisted for the 2015 Folio Prize.
Four siblings gather for a few hot summer weeks at their late grandparents’ house, where rivalry, desire and secrets surface and the children discover something in a ruined cottage in the woods.
It is Hadley’s sixth novel; she received a Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction in 2016.
On Mothering Sunday, 30 March 1924, Jane Fairchild, a 22-year-old maid, spends her afternoon off with her lover Paul Sheringham, who is about to marry a woman of his own class.
It was adapted as a 2021 film directed by Eva Husson, with Olivia Colman and Colin Firth.
Subtitled A Life of Art and Nonsense, the book is a biography of Edward Lear, author of limericks and nonsense songs, covering his moods, friendships and restless travels.
It was named a Book of the Year by the Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Spectator.
A biography of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that presents his life and work as shaped by the people and events around him.
It was The Times Biography of the Year in 2018; Prideaux’s Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream won the James Tait Black Prize.
A collection exploring vulnerability, which the 2020 judge Christopher Reid described as “a frank and militant declaration of joy” with complex undercurrents.
It was shortlisted for the 2019 Costa Poetry Award.
A volume of new poems together with poems selected from Duhig’s earlier work, published by Picador in 2021.
Duhig won the National Poetry Competition in 1987 with “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”.
Sayon Hughes, drawn into drug dealing with his cousin while trying to leave his Bristol neighbourhood and keep his relationship with Shona, faces a choice between his crime and his future after a deadly altercation.
It also won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2023.
Six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station circle the Earth sixteen times in one day, collecting data and watching the planet, as news of a death at home and a typhoon below reach them.
It won the 2024 Booker Prize, the first novel set in space to do so.
Three boys from Mezritsh set out with a case of bristle brushes for the market town of Lublin, in a novel of early-20th-century Jewish life in a Polish corner of the Russian empire.
It also won the 2025 Wingate Literary Prize and the 2025 RSL Encore Award.
During a time of restricted movement, the narrator visits his reclusive father, Thomas, who is descending into dementia and packing up to move into a care home.
It is Klaces’s second novel and was shortlisted for the Society of Authors’ Encore Award 2026.
Alice Warrender founded the prize in 1919, and it was first administered by the Hawthornden Trust that she set up. It shares with the James Tait Black Prizes, founded the same year, the description of Britain’s oldest literary award; several books won both, including David Garnett’s Lady into Fox and Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man.
The prize was not awarded from 1945 to 1957, in 1959, 1966 and 1971–1973, or from 1984 to 1987. It was revived in 1987 with the support of Drue Heinz, whose Hawthornden Foundation, named after Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, now runs it alongside writers’ residencies.
The prize is given for a work of “imaginative literature” in English, not a translation, by a British, Irish or British-based author, published in the previous calendar year. Poetry, novels, history, biography and creative non-fiction are all eligible, and winners have ranged from Ted Hughes’s Lupercal to Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings.
The prize does not accept submissions, and previous winners are excluded from the shortlist. Its value has risen from £100 in 1936 and £2,000 by 1995 to £15,000 in 2023 and £25,000 from 2024.
It is an annual £25,000 award, founded in 1919, for a book of imaginative literature in English by a British, Irish or British-based author.
Caleb Klaces won with his second novel, Mr Outside; Colwill Brown and Thomas A Clark received honourable mentions.
Manya Wilkinson won with the novel Lublin, published by And Other Stories.
It and the James Tait Black Prizes, both founded in 1919, are described as Britain’s oldest literary awards.
No. The prize does not accept submissions, and previous winners are excluded from the shortlist.
Poetry, novels, history, biography and creative non-fiction written in English; translations are not eligible.
Yes: 1945–1957, 1959, 1966, 1971–1973 and 1984–1987.
Vita Sackville-West won in 1926 for The Land and in 1933 for Collected Poems.
Winner list last verified 28 October 2026.
The notes on this page are all mine,
and the books are all theirs.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
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