Sarah Wootton wins the Elma Dangerfield Prize for her book, Byronic Heroes

Congratulations to Dr Sarah Wootton, whose recent book Byronic Heroes in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing and Screen Adaptation has won the 2016 Elma Dangerfield Prize, awarded by the International Association of Byron Societies. 

Byronic Heroes focuses on the fiction of major nineteenth-century women writers – including Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot – and the resurgence of Byronic heroes in film and television versions of their works. The prize is awarded by the IABS for the book which makes the strongest contribution to the study of Byron or a Byron-related topic each year.

an outstanding contribution to scholarship on Byron’s reception and impact

Byronic Heroes was highly praised by the judges for its originality, insight, scholarship and significance. The international committee noted that the book provides “an outstanding contribution to scholarship on Byron’s reception and impact, as well as more broadly on the interrelationship between Romanticism and Victorian realism. Uncovering yet more ways in which women writers responded to Byron’s work and persona, it ultimately asks us to rethink the figure of the Byronic Hero.”

As well as being of value for scholars working across the range of Byron studies, the scope of Byronic Heroes will make it useful “for scholars working in Austen studies, Victorian studies, and studies of film adaptations from literature, among others.” The committee added that the “book stands out for the originality of its research, the grace and clarity of the prose, and the persuasive logic of the exposition.”

Sarah Wootton’s Byronic Heroes in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing and Screen Adaptation is published by Palgrave Macmillan. The introduction is available to read free online.