‘Has Anybody Heard of it?!!!’: The Constable Trophy for Northern Writers and its Prize Environment

Abstract

Book awards exist to direct prestige within an economy of cultural power. They are ‘a claim to authority’ over a given field (English, 2005: 51). As such, they exist ‘as a solution to some claimed problem’ in the wider field (Best, 2008: 13). The position of an award’s given solution will often invoke other book awards, in what Claire Squires terms the ‘prize environment’ (Squires, 2013: 299) or English calls a ‘subsidiary cultural marketplace’ remarking on the ‘internal logic of the awards scene’ (2005: 54). This article seeks to recover the history of the Constable Trophy, a now-lapsed literary prize awarded between 1977 and 1992 to demonstrate the work of recognition performed during the award, and how the prize has a legacy within the wider UK prize environment. Working with a wide variety of sources, ranging from personal correspondence with key agents for the trophy to newspaper coverage and the novels published as a result of the prize, the article demonstrates the continuing significance of the trophy as a counter to the ‘London-centric’ publishing industry.