The judges have shortlisted six titles for the Tony Lothian Prize, given for a proposal by a first-time biographer. The £2,000 prize will be presented at our Christmas party (see above).
Victoria Baena: A Sentimental Education – Amélie Bosquet, Gustave Flaubert, and the Writer’s Vocation in Nineteenth-Century France
A Sentimental Education draws on original archival research to tell the story of Amélie Bosquet, novelist, early feminist and close friend and correspondent of Gustave Flaubert, to whom he is thought to have said, ‘Madame Bovary, c’est moi’.
Stephanie Genty: Bitter Strength – The Life and Work of Marilyn French, Feminist
Marilyn French distilled the rage of a whole generation of women in her bestselling novel The Women’s Room, which almost single-handedly brought the feminist movement to mainstream America. It sold 7 million copies in the US and 21 million worldwide, inspired women to take their lives into their own hands, and influenced the way we think about gender.
Andrew Kenrick: Juba – From Roman Slave to African King
Kenrick tells the astonishing story of the Berber Prince Juba II (52BC–AD23), whose father was killed by Julius Caesar during the Roman conquest of North Africa in 46BC. Raised by Octavian – now Emperor Augustus – he was given the Kingdom of Mauretania (modern-day Morocco and Algeria) to rule in the name of Rome.
Sue Laurence: Ada Chesterton – Fleet Street Bohemian and Adventurer
A first biography of a pioneering journalist, campaigner and adventuress, a remarkable figure who straddled the worlds of Fleet Street and bohemia in the Edwardian age. Sister-in-law of G.K. Chesterton, she reported back from the trenches during WW1 and from Poland after the war, before returning home to engage with the plight of working-class women.
Andrew Moscrop: Upriver, after Fred: A Thames Journey
This is a journey upriver and through the archives in search of the elusive early-20th-century Thames historian Frederick Samuel Thacker, author of four immersive books about the Thames and its tributaries that are, unaccountably, out of print.
Matthew Zipf: Renata Adler – At the Radical Middle
Written with personal knowledge of its subject, this study of Renata Adler, journalist, author and film critic, pulls a single thread – that of a literary writer engaging deeply with civil rights – from the apparent randomness of Adler’s life.