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This cultural history of the Saltire Society Literary Awards demonstrates the significance the awards have had within Scottish literary and cultural life. It is one piece of the wider cultural award puzzle and illustrates how, far from being parochial or niche, lesser-known awards, whose histories may be yet untold, play their own role in the circulation of cultural value through the consecration of literary value. The study of the Society’s Book of the Year and First Book of the Year Awards not only highlights how important connections between literary awards and national culture and identity are within prize culture and how literary awards, and their founding institutions, can be products of the socio-political and cultural milieu in which they form, but this study also illustrates how existing literary award scholarship has only begun to scratch the surface of the complexities of the phenomenon. This book promotes a new approach to considering literary prizes, proposing that the concept of the literary awards hierarchy can contribute to emerging and developing discourses pertaining to literary, and indeed cultural, prizes more broadly.
“The book is a valuable contribution to the field of prize studies. The deep history of the Saltire Prize is, in and of itself, a valuable addition to knowledge about Scottish organization, political assembly and perceptions of national cultural production. There are a number of original and innovative dimensions to the work, and the book’s research has clear implications for cultural studies, English studies, publishing studies, the sociology of the arts, arts labour, and area studies.” —Will Smith, University of Stirling, UK
List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I; 1. The History of the Saltire Society; 2. The Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year; 3. The Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award; Part II; 4. ‘What’s This Got to Do with Scotland?’: Qualifying Scottishness through Terms of Eligibility; 5. Noticing Talent: Michel Faber, James Kelman, A. L. Kennedy, Ali Smith and the Saltire Society Literary Awards; 6. Not Your Typical Book Award: New Ways of Thinking about Literary Awards; Appendix; Notes; Bibliography; Index.