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Britain’s Women-Only Orange Prize for Fiction
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21348 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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7 / 2001 |
4,390 Words |
| Author
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Merritt Moseley
Merritt Moseley is professor of literature at the University
of North Carolina at Asheville and the author of several books
on contemporary British literature. |
On June 6, 2000, Linda Grant won the Orange Prize for her novel When I Lived in Modern Times. She thus became the fifth novelist, and the second British one, to receive this much-discussed award. Though the newest of Britain's major literary prizes (and there are many), the Orange is its most lucrative (worth *30,000, or about $45,000) and, by all odds, its most controversial, because only women authors are eligible for it. The existence of the Orange Prize, then, like its history, raises important questions about the purpose of literary awards, fairness and gender awareness, and even the continued vitality of British writing.
There is no question that the giving of prizes is an important branch of British literary culture. Among the many awards for which novelists--to say nothing of poets, biographers, translators, and authors of children's books--become eligible are the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the Betty Trask Awards (several given each year, ostensibly for "a romantic novel or other novel of a traditional rather than experimental nature"), the Somerset Maugham Award (several each year, for first-time authors under thirty-five), the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (for an author under forty), the Hawthorneden Prize, and the populist W.H. Smith Thumping Good Read Award, chosen by readers.
The two leading novel awards are the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize. The Booker, worth *21,000, has been awarded since 1969 and, for many reasons (including well-publicized spats among the judges and snits among the losers), has the largest reputation. It is awarded at a grand ceremony held at London's Guildhall, broadcast live on television. Oddly, it attracts considerable betting interest and, as soon as the
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