Barbara Donagan Essay Prize
The Huntington Library Quarterly invites submissions for the Barbara Donagan Essay Prize. This new annual prize honors Barbara Donagan, distinguished historian of early modern Britain, in particular of the English civil wars. By encouraging the publication of new research, the prize pays tribute to her great generosity in advising and mentoring fellow scholars at the Huntington and beyond.
The Donagan Prize is offered for essays in any of the fields published by the Huntington Library Quarterly, a humanities journal of early modern Britain and early America. The HLQ’s scope spans the sixteenth through the long eighteenth centuries and encompasses the peoples of the Anglo-American world, including Britain and its colonies, the Caribbean, Indigenous nations, New France, and the Spanish Borderlands. The journal encourages interdisciplinary approaches and embraces research in all humanities fields. The competition is open to scholars at any stage. Essays need not be based on research in the Huntington Library’s collections; the location of research or sources plays no role in evaluation.
The award: The prize carries a cash award of $1,000 USD to the author, and the winning essay will be published in the journal. Entries must not have been published or be under submission elsewhere. In addition to appearing in the print publication and in Project MUSE for subscribers, the essay will be freely available upon publication on the journal’s Penn Press website (https://hlq.pennpress.org) and promoted there for the period of a year. The prize-winning essay will also be announced on and linked to on appropriate websites and forums.
Preparing the manuscript: We do not require submitters to put their manuscripts into our house style before acceptance, although of course you may (style guidelines are here, beginning on the second page). You should, however, follow a consistent style, and notes should be complete. Please double-space, set one-inch margins, paginate, and use a 12-point typeface in your manuscript. Application should be made via the HLQ’s online review and submission system, https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/hlq. Indicate by checking the checkbox that you wish your essay to be considered for the prize, and please let us know how you heard about the award. Word limit: 10,000 words, including notes. Any submissions of over 10,000 words will automatically be disqualified from consideration. Evaluation: The awards committee is composed of a minimum of three members of the HLQ editorial board, selected to cover the topics of the submissions received and chaired by the (nonvoting) editor.
The committee may solicit outside reviews in the event that no board member has expertise in the topic of a submission. Submissions will be blinded, and the process will meet the journal’s ordinary requirements for peer review. Board members will assess essays based on their originality and the significance of their contribution to their field, their interest to an interdisciplinary audience, the persuasiveness of their argument, and the quality of their writing. The journal reserves the right not to award the prize. Direct questions to hlq@huntington.org.
Barbara Donagan, an independent scholar at the Huntington Library and editorial board member of the Huntington Library Quarterly, is the author of War in England, 1642–49 (2008), winner of the Morris D. Forkosch Prize, awarded by the American Historical Association. She has also published articles in several edited volumes and in Past & Present, The Historical Journal, the Journal of British Studies, and The American Historical Review, among many others.
