Dr Helen Moore wins the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize

The accolade is one of a selection of prizes and medals awarded today by the British Academy, the national body for the humanities and social sciences, for notable contributions to fields including Linguistics, Cultural History and Biblical Studies and is shared with Gillian Russell, Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at the University of York, author of The Ephemeral Eighteenth Century: Print, Sociability and the Cultures of Collecting (Cambridge University Press, 2020). 

Dr Helen Moore

On hearing the news of the award Dr Moore said: 'It is a great honour to be awarded this shared prize by the British Academy.  My book celebrates the longevity and vitality of the connections between English and continental European literature, and between different kinds of fiction.  It is also very much a product of the remarkable research culture I have enjoyed at Oxford and its library resources, which have enabled me to work dynamically across not only literary periods but also academic disciplines.'

Helen's research interests span the medieval, early modern and later periods of English, with a particular emphasis on the engagements and interactions of English with continental and classical literature.  Her publications include editions of the chivalric romance Amadis de Gaule (2004) and the seventeenth-century play Guy of Warwick (2007), and she co-edited Classical Literary Careers and their Reception (2010).  She was the lead curator for the Bodleian Library exhibition celebrating the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible, and co-editor of the accompanying book, Manifold Greatness: The Making of the King James Bible (2011).  Her next book is a critical and cultural biography of the Jacobean playwright John Webster, called The Sense of Sorrow: A Life of John Webster, for which she was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship.

Professor Julia Black, President of the British Academy, said: 'The British Academy recognises excellence in the humanities and social sciences and celebrates the contributions of outstanding scholars in a huge range of fields. On behalf of the British Academy, I extend warm congratulations to each of this year’s winners. Their students, colleagues, and the whole scholarly community look to them for inspiration.'