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The Justin G. Schiller Prize for Bibliographical Work on Pre-20th-Century Children's Books

The 2010 winner was Jill Shefrin for her book The Dartons: Publishers of Educational Aids, Pastimes & Juvenile Ephemera, 1787-1876. A Bibliographic Checklist. (More details below)

Applying for the Schiller Prize

The next Schiller Prize will be awarded at the Society's 2013 Annual Meeting.  Works put into nomination, which must be in English, may concentrate on any children’s book printed before the year 1901 in any country or any language. Submissions should involve research into bibliography and printing history broadly conceived and should focus on the physical book as historical evidence for studying topics such as the history of book production, publication, distribution, collecting, or reading. Studies of the printing, publishing, and allied trades, as these relate to children’s books, are also welcome.

Eligible scholarship may take the form of a published book or article, a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation that has been defended and approved, or research results distributed in another manner, such as on a World-Wide-Web site or a CD-ROM. Eligible scholarship must have been published, approved, or posted between 1 January 2010 and 1 October 2012.

If a publication has an incorrect nominal date disqualifying it for submission but an actual date of publication within the prize period, it may be nominated with a letter by the publisher or editor testifying to the actual date of publication. Unpublished dissertations and theses must be accompanied by a letter from the director attesting their approval.

All scholars are eligible to apply for the Schiller Prize without regard to membership in the Bibliographical Society of America or any other society, and without regard to citizenship or academic affiliation, degree, or rank. The Prize will be awarded to the author of a particular work of scholarship without regard to the author’s prolonged or repeated contributions to the field. Since the Prize is designed to promote research on the bibliography of children’s books, applications are encouraged from young or junior scholars who have not as yet published extensively. Applicants may nominate themselves or be nominated by others, including publishers, journal editors, and dissertation or thesis directors.

Applications must contain the following items:

• a letter of intent addressed to the "Schiller Prize Committee,"
• a one-page curriculum vitae,
• any documentation regarding the approval of a thesis or a dissertation or confirming the date of a publication, if required.

A copy of a published monograph or essay placed into nomination is encouraged but not required. If a copy is not submitted, a complete citation of the work must be included with the application. Authors of web-based or online resources should provide the URL for the full-text or submit a PDF. Web-based resources require free access to the website and instructions regarding its use, along with a statement regarding plans for maintaining ongoing access.

Applications may be submitted electronically or via regular mail:

E-mail: aimmel@princeton.edu — with cc to: bsa@bibsocamer.org

Regular Mail:

Andrea Immel
Schiller Prize Coordinator
Cotsen Children's Library
Princeton University Library
1 Washington Road
Princeton, NJ 08544

With cc to:

Schiller Prize Committee
c/o the Executive Secretary
Bibliographical Society of America
P.O. Box 1537
Lenox Hill Station
New York, NY 10021

Questions regarding the award should be addressed to the Schiller Prize Coordinator:

Andrea Immel
Schiller Prize Coordinator
Cotsen Children's Library
1 Washington Road
Princeton, NJ 08544
e-mail: aimmel@princeton.edu
Phone: 609-258-1148
FAX 609-258-2324

schiller prize recipients

Jill Shefrin, 2010

The winner of the 2010 Justin G. Schiller Prize was Jill Shefrin’s The Dartons: Publishers of Educational  Aids, Pastimes and Juvenile Ephemera, 1787-1876 (Los Angeles: Cotsen Occasional Press, 2009).  This new 552-page bibliography with 284 color illustrations is the companion volume to the 2007 winner of the Schiller Prize, Lawrence Darton’s The Dartons: An Annotated Check-list of Children’s Books Issued by the Two Publishing Houses 1787-1876 (2004).  Over a thousand items (jigsaw puzzles, maps, board games, cards, battledores, pictorial sheets, block puzzles alphabet tiles, scrolls, writing sheets and more) are located and described in precise and lively ordinary language.  As Stuart Bennett so aptly notes in his review in the December 2009 Children’s Books History Society Newsletter, Shefrin’s study is  “at once pioneering and definitive. Pioneering because…nobody has previously investigated the ephemeral educational tools offered by a single publisher…and definitive because it does the job in a masterly way.”   As in 2007, the Schiller prize committee had an excellent pool of nominated works to consider (articles, an exhibition catalogue, monographs and one web site), but none was as ambitious in scope and furthered new methods of bibliographic description as Shefrin’s.  By demonstrating that the market for such materials was far more extensive than anyone realized, her work will surely inspire other researchers to study the wealth of material she has uncovered and generously guide them to those institutions that collection them.

Lawrence Darton, 2007

The Bibliographical Society of America is pleased to announce that the winner of the first Justin G. Schiller Prize for Bibliographical Work in Pre-20^th Century Children’s Books is

Lawrence Darton’s The Dartons: An Annotated Check-list of Children’s Books Issued by Two Publishing Houses 1787-1876 (London/New Castle, Delaware: British Library/ Oak Knoll Press, 2004).  It was selected from a very competitive group of candidates, which included monographs, articles, dissertations, exhibition catalogues, and web sites.

The award committee judged Mr. Darton’s bibliography a major scholarly milestone that surpassed previous standards in the field, which were set by Sydney Roscoe, Marjorie Moon, and Christina Duff Stewart.  Over twenty-five years in the making, the illustrated 729-page monograph describes and indexes in scrupulous detail the output of two of the most influential children’s book publishing firms during a key period in the genre’s development.  The Dartons thus builds upon and extends our knowledge about the origins of modern children’s book publishing in England during the long eighteenth century and well into the Victorian period.  Children’s book historians, collectors, and historians of the book and of nineteenth-century print culture will find The Dartons an invaluable guide.

Mr. Darton, an independent scholar, is the great-great-great-grandson of the first William Darton, founder of the house of Darton.   His bibliography was also the recipient of the Children’s Books History Society’s 2004 F. J. Harvey Darton Prize.

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