Discover

The 'Somerset Maugham Award' is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to who they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus bears his name: the award is currently £6000 per winner, to be spent on foreign travel. The total fund for each year is £12000 [1].
Since 1964, multiple winners have usually been chosen in the same year. In 1975, the award was not given. The Award has twice been won by the son of a previous winner: Kingsley Amis (winner in 1955) was the father of Martin Amis (1974), and Nigel Kneale (1950) the father of Matthew Kneale (1988).

Contents

Full list of winners

External links

Full list of winners

Year	Author	Book
1947	A. L. Barker	''Innocents''
1948	P. H. Newby	''Journey to the Interior''
1949	Hamish Henderson	''Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica''
1950	Nigel Kneale	''Tomato Cain & Other Stories''
1951	Roland Camberton	''Scamp''
1952	Francis King	''The Dividing Stream''
1953	Emyr Humphreys	''Hear and Forgive''
1954	Doris Lessing	''Five Short Novels''
1955	Kingsley Amis	''Lucky Jim''
1956	Elizabeth Jennings	''A Way of Looking''
1957	George Lamming	''In the Castle of My Skin''
1958	John Wain	''Preliminary Essays''
1959	Thom Gunn	''A Sense Of Movement''
1960	Ted Hughes	''The Hawk in the Rain''
1961	V. S. Naipaul	''Miguel Street''
1962	Hugh Thomas	''The Spanish Civil War''
1963	David Storey	''Flight Into Camden''
1964	Dan Jacobson	''Time of Arrival''
	John le Carré	''The Spy Who Came In From the Cold''
1965	Peter Everett	''Negatives''
1966	Michael Frayn	''The Tin Men''
	Julian Mitchell	''The White Father''
1967	B. S. Johnson	''Trawl''
	Andrew Sinclair	''The Better Half''
1968	Paul Bailey	''At The Jerusalem''
	Seamus Heaney	''Death of a Naturalist''
1969	Angela Carter	''Several Perceptions''
1970	Jane Gaskell	''A Sweet Sweet Summer''
	Piers Paul Read	''Monk Dawson''
1971	Susan Hill	''I'm the King of the Castle''
	Richard Barber	''The Knight and Chivalry''
	Michael Hastings	''Tussy Is Me''
1972	Douglas Dunn	''Terry Street''
	Gillian Tindall	''Fly Away Home''
1973	Peter Prince	''Play Things''
	Paul Strathern	''A Season in Abyssinia''
	Jonathan Street	''Prudence Dictates''
1974	Martin Amis	''The Rachel Papers''
1975	No Award	No Award
1976	Dominic Cooper	''The Dead of Winter''
	Ian McEwan	''First Love, Last Rites''
1977	Richard Holmes	''Shelley: The Pursuit''
1978	Tom Paulin	''A State of Justice''
	Nigel Williams	''My Life Closed Twice''
1979	Helen Hodgman	''Jack & Jill''
	Sara Maitland	''Daughter of Jerusalem''
1980	Max Hastings	''Bomber Command''
	Christopher Reid	''Arcadia''
	Humphrey Carpenter	''The Inklings''
1981	Julian Barnes	''Metroland''
	Clive Sinclair	''Hearts of Gold''
	A. N. Wilson	''The Healing Art''
1982	William Boyd	''A Good Man in Africa''
	Adam Mars-Jones	''Lantern Lecture''
1983	Lisa St Aubin de Teran	''Keepers of the House''
1984	Peter Ackroyd	''The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde''
	Timothy Garton Ash	''The Polish Revolution: Solidarity''
	Sean O'Brien	''The Indoor Park''
1985	Blake Morrison	''Dark Glasses''
	Jeremy Reed	''By the Fisheries''
	Jane Rogers	''Her Living Image''
1986	Patricia Ferguson	''Family Myths and Legends''
	Adam Nicolson	''Frontiers''
	Tim Parks	''Tongues of Flame''
1987	Stephen Gregory	''The Cormorant''
	Janni Howker	''Isaac Campion''
	Andrew Motion	''The Lamberts''
1988	Jimmy Burns	''The Land That Lost Its Heroes''
	Carol Ann Duffy	''Selling Manhattan''
	Matthew Kneale	''Whore Banquets''
1989	Rupert Christiansen	''Romantic Affinities''
	Alan Hollinghurst	''The Swimming Pool Library''
	Deirdre Madden	''The Birds of the Innocent Wood''
1990	Mark Hudson	''Our Grandmothers' Drums''
	Sam North	''The Automatic Man''
	Nicholas Shakespeare	''The Vision of Elena Silves''
1991	Peter Benson	''The Other Occupant''
	Lesley Glaister	''Honour Thy Father''
	Helen Simpson	''Four Bare Legs in a Bed''
1992	Geoff Dyer	''
	Lawrence Norfolk	''Lempriere's Dictionary''
	Gerard Woodward	''Householder''
1993	Dea Birkett	''Jella''
	Duncan McLean	''Bucket of Tongues''
	Glyn Maxwell	''Out of the Rain''
1994	Jackie Kay	''Other Lovers''
	A. L. Kennedy	''Looking For the Possible Dance''
	Philip Marsden	''Crossing Place''
1995	Patrick French	''Younghusband''
	Simon Garfield	''The End of Innocence''
	Kathleen Jamie	''The Queen of Sheba''
	Laura Thompson	''The Dogs''
1996	Katherine Pierpoint	''Truffle Beds''
	Alan Warner	''Morvern Callar''
1997	Rhidian Brook	''The Testimony of Taliesin Jones''
	Kate Clanchy	''Slattern''
	Philip Hensher	''Kitchen Venom''
	Francis Spufford	''I May Be Some Time''
1998	Rachel Cusk	''The Country Life''
	Jonathan Rendall	''This Bloody Mary Is the Last Thing I Own''
	Kate Summerscale	''The Queen of Whale Cay''
	Robert Twigger	''Angry White Pyjamas''
1999	Andrea Ashworth	''Once in a House on Fire''
	Paul Farley	''The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You''
	Giles Foden	''The Last King of Scotland''
	Jonathan Freedland	''Bring Home the Revolution''
2000	Bella Bathurst	''The Lighthouse Stevensons''
	Sarah Waters	''Affinity''
2001	Edward Platt	''Leadville—A Biography of the A40''
	Ben Rice	''Pobby And Dingan''
2002	Charlotte Hobson	''Black Earth City''
	Marcel Theroux	''
2003	William Fiennes	''The Snow Geese''
	Hari Kunzru	''The Impressionist''
	Jon McGregor	''If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things''
2004	Charlotte Mendelson	''Daughters of Jerusalem''
	Mark Blayney	''Two Kinds of Silence''
	Robert Macfarlane	''Mountains of the Mind''
2005	Justin Hill	''Passing Under Heaven''
	Maggie O'Farrell	''The Distance Between Us''
2006	Chris Cleave	''Incendiary''
	Zadie Smith	''On Beauty''
	Owen Sheers	''Skirrid Hill''
2007	Horatio Clare	''Running For The Hills''
	James Scudamore	''The Amnesia Clinic''

External links

★ The Somerset Maugham Award - a list of winners

★ Somerset Maugham award '(PDF)'