VPFA Book Prize

We are very happy to announce the winner of the 2025 First Book Prize:

Rebecca Nesvet, James Malcolm Rymer, Penny Fiction, and the Family(Routledge, 2025)

The judges for this year were: Professor Kate Newey, Professor Andrew King, and Dr Chris Louttit, and offered this feedback:

This book is at the centre of the recovery of the popular, and is highly original. It is based on deep research on penny fiction in original periodical publication and this is backed up with extensive biographical and contextual digging. The focus on Rymer’s preoccupation with the British working family as audience and subject matter is refreshing, as is the willingness to show Rymer was a relatively conservative author. There is a lot of new material presented in thoughtful ways, and there is a sophisticated politicised engagement with the popular. This is going to be the standard text on Rymer and his very influential fiction for a long time.

An enormous thank you to all our colleagues who submitted their book for consideration. The judges said they were all impressive works and a joy to read, meaning that deciding the winner was a tough decision. 

The judges selected two runners-up:

• Riley McGuire, Dysfluent in Fiction (The Ohio State University Press)

This book offers a precise, clearly written and interesting account of speech and speech disabilities (‘dysfluency’) based on a good combination of depth of research, theorising around disability and character studies and close readings. There is a good balance between interdisciplinary adventurousness and range of close readings that do not neglect aspects of literary form and structure. While the popular is not foregrounded, it is clear that popular culture and fictions are central to the argument. The book offers something genuinely new to the field.

• Jay Sullivan, Egyptian Gothic, 1884-1920

This book focuses squarely on the popular paradigm. It is really well-written, well-argued, and the research ranges widely. There is an impressive range of critical approaches, ranging from visual culture to sound studies. The focus on different sensory experiences of the Egyptianised Gothic and the figure of the mummy in particular provides a logical but also fluid and quite imaginative structure, and the application of this ‘sensory’ reading is also novel in Victorian popular fiction studies. There’s a lot to admire in this study, not least the energy and writing style: the introduction and conclusion in particular are fun and engaging. Since this is a genre study, more theoretical grounding in genre could have been provided; there could also be more information given about the reception and critical discourse around the genre that is being recovered here.

Our thanks to the judges for their time, effort, and thorough report.

We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2024 VPFA Second Book Prize:

Tara MacDonald, Narrative, Affect, and Victorian Sensation: Wilful Bodies (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

Prof. MacDonald will recieve a £200 cash prize and be honoured at the AGM of the upcoming VPFA Annual Conference at the Birmingham and Midlands Institute (14-16 July 2025)

The judging panel, Professors Anne-Marie Beller, Kate Newey and Jennifer Phegley, offered the following feedback:

Narrative, Affect, and Victorian Sensation is an exciting and impressive new approach to sensation fiction. The book is well-written and engaging in its readings of popular novels and criticism of those novels when they were first published and today….Its intellectual scope and reach is invigorating and compelling, particularly in its use of previous scholarship, which scaffolds the author’s quite original approach. This book offers a fresh and original take on ideas of sensational feeling and reading, with a central solid focus on popular fiction, and a challenging theoretical and critical framework….It combines detailed knowledge of intellectual trends of the period, with a sophisticated theoretical approach to narrative, and analyses of a really impressive range of writers and texts. It’s a really valuable contribution to our field and an excellent piece of scholarship in every way.

The judging panel was impressed by the high quality of all the entries, and want to thank all colleagues who submitted their work.

The judges selected two runners-up:

• Alexander Bubb, Asian Classics on the Victorian Bookshelf (Oxford University Press, 2023)
• Helena Esser, Ouida (Edward Everett Root, 2024)

The Victorian Popular Fiction Association sends its congratulations to Tara MacDonald and the two runners-up. We thank the judges for their time and effort, and their thorough report, and we look forward to calling for submissions for the 2025 VPFA First Book Prize (for books published in 2024 and 2025) in the autumn.

We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 VPFA First Book Prize:

Laura Kasson Fiss, The Idler’s Club: Humour and Mass Readership from Jerome K. Jerome to P. G. Wodehouse (Edinburgh UP, 2023).

Dr Fiss will receive a £200 cash prize and be honoured at the AGM of the VPFA Annual Conference at Canterbury Christ Church University (15-17 July 2024).

The judging panel, Professors Anne-Marie Beller, Kate Newey and Jennifer Phegley, wrote in their decision:

[Fiss’s] exploration of this particular cohort of writers as a literal and metaphorical ‘club’ makes an original contribution to the study of these famous but largely neglected figures who have had a lasting impact on contemporary popular cultural forms. … A consideration of the popular lies at the heart of the study [and] Fiss brings fresh and interesting new ideas to the table. … [Fiss] moves smoothly and cogently between textual analysis, literary critical analysis, and a materialist historical framing of the texts. This is not  presented as just context, but is a fundamental understanding of the ways in which this kind of periodical writing participates in a material and industrial landscape of literary production. … The book is a good read, and takes on its subject matter with appropriate humour as well as authority.

VPFA received submissions from the United Kingdom, continental Europe as well as the United States for their inaugural First Book Prize. Entries were submitted by authors, as well as publishers and promoters. Selecting a single winner, wrote the judging panel, was difficult, and they want to thank all colleagues who submitted their works, for their illuminating, fresh studies.

The judges selected two runners-up:

• Abigail Boucher, Science,Medicine, and Aristocratic Lineage in Victorian Popular Fiction (Palgrave, 2023)
• Livia Arndal Woods, Pregnancy in the Victorian Novel (Ohio State University Press, 2022)

The Victorian Popular Fiction Association sends its congratulations to Laura Kasson Fiss and the two runners-up. We thank the judges for their time and effort, and their thorough report.