Posted at 2:58PM
Friday 08 Jul 2016
"NATURAL EVOLUTION" FOR RICHARD JEFFERIES
SOCIETY WRITERS' PRIZE AS WHITE HORSE BOOKSHOP BECOMES INAUGURAL SPONSOR
MARLBOROUGH INDIE DOUBLES PRIZE VALUE AS SUBMISSIONS OPEN FOR 2016 PRIZE
The White Horse Bookshop in Marlborough has become the first sponsor of
the Richard Jefferies Society Writers' Prize for Outstanding Nature Writing,
immediately doubling the amount the winning author will receive (bringing the total prize to £1,000). Named after
the celebrated and ground-breaking Victorian writer and naturalist, the Prize
was first awarded in March of this year to John Lister-Kaye for Gods of the Morning
(Canongate). Submissions are now being accepted for the second Prize, which
will be announced in Spring of 2017. The closing date is 31st December 2016.
Angus MacLennan, General Manager of the White Horse Bookshop, said:
"It is obvious from the breadth and quality of publishing I see
represented on our shelves every day that we are in a golden age of nature
writing. This, coupled with our location at the foot of the Marlborough Downs,
an area Richard Jefferies wrote about, made sponsoring the Prize a very easy
decision." The winner of the second Richard Jefferies Society Writers'
Prize will be announced at a ceremony in the 73-year-old bookshop's new events
room in Spring next year.
John Price, Chairman of the Richard Jefferies Society, said: "We
are thrilled to have found such a perfect sponsor so soon in the Prize's life –
it seems, fittingly, to be a very natural evolution. Richard Jefferies was a
Wiltshire man and would have known the area well – I am sure he would
thoroughly approve of our new sponsor and of the shop's support of nature
writing and writers."
The Prize is open to nature writing of any length or in any format that
is broadly consistent with the work of Richard Jefferies. Submissions may
include first English translations and all entries must have been published,
for the first time, within the calendar year. MacLennan will join members of
the Richard Jefferies Society council in selecting a shortlist which will be
announced in March 2017, followed by the winner in early Summer.
For further details of submissions, please contact Angus MacLennan
at the White Horse Bookshop:
Email: whitehorsebookshop@btconnect.com Telephone: 01672 512071
Notes for Editors
About Richard Jefferies
(John) Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) is best known for his prolific and
sensitive writing on natural history, rural life and agriculture in late
Victorian England. Less well-known now than he deserves to be, Jefferies stands
in tradition of writers concerned with man's relationship to the natural world
– a forerunner of today's abundance of nature writing. Perhaps his best-known
works today are Bevis (sometimes described as an English Huckleberry Finn),
Round About a Great Estate, and After London, one of the earliest works of
'post-apocalyptic' fiction.
For further information about Jefferies life and work, please visit:
http://www.richardjefferiessociety.org
About the Prize
John Webb, one of the Richard Jefferies Society's most active members,
died in 2014. He left the Society a legacy that will be used as a memorial to
him: The Richard Jefferies Society Writers' Prize commenced in 2015. The
inaugural winner was John Lister-Kaye for Gods of the Morning (Canongate).
About the White Horse Bookshop
The White Horse Bookshop first opened its doors in 1943 and has stood on
its present site - a 16th century townhouse in Marlborough, Wiltshire - since
1949. It was bought in 2014 by local businessmen Robert Hiscox (founder of
Hiscox insurance) and Brian Kingham (founder of Reliance Securities Group).
http://www.whitehorsebooks.co.uk/
