Gordon Duff Prize
Your chance to write an essay and win £500!
The Gordon Duff Prize is awarded annually for an essay on a subject relating to the science or arts of books and manuscripts. It is open to all University of Cambridge members, students, staff and alumni. There is an award of £500 for the winner(s) of the competition: the prize can be shared for a co-written work or attributed to two separate entries.
The Prize arose out of the bequest of Edward Gordon Duff, read more about the history of the prize here.
How to enter
Who may compete?
The Gordon Duff Prize is an annual competition and is open to all University of Cambridge members, students, staff and alumni.
On what subject?
Any one of the following subjects: bibliography, palaeography, typography, book-binding, book-illustration, or the science of books and manuscripts and the arts relating thereto.
Proposal of subjects:
Please send a title and brief abstract of proposed subjects to the Cambridge University Library Research Institute, Cambridge, CB3 9DR (researchdevelopment@lib.cam.ac.uk) so as to reach them not later than the last day of Michaelmas Term, 19 December (email preferred). Please note the deadline for the 2024 prize has now passed.
Candidates will be informed whether their proposed subjects are approved by the Library Syndicate after its meeting in February.
If you have any enquiries related to the prize, please contact William Hale, Rare Books Specialist, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, CB3 9DR (wah26@cam.ac.uk).
Submission of essays:
If the proposed subject is approved, essays, which must not exceed 10,000 words in length, must be sent in hard-copy and electronic form to the Cambridge University Library Research Institute, Cambridge, CB3 9DR (researchdevelopment@lib.cam.ac.uk) by the last day of Lent Term, 24 March (or 25 March in a leap year).
Award:
The Prize shall be awarded in the Easter Term. If essays of sufficient merit are submitted, it shall be open to the Adjudicators to award an additional Prize.
Please note Adjudicators are not obliged to provide feedback to submitted essays.
A copy of the winning essay will be deposited in the Manuscript Department of the University Library.
Alfonsi regis dicta et facta (Pisa: Gregorius de Gente, 1485), the Library’s only Pisan incunable, which Edward Gordon Duff signed and presented to the Library in 1910.
Alfonsi regis dicta et facta (Pisa: Gregorius de Gente, 1485), the Library’s only Pisan incunable, which Edward Gordon Duff signed and presented to the Library in 1910.
Winner of the 2023 prize
Sasha Gardner, 'Light out of darkness: women wood engravers of the 20th century and the Jaffé collection at Newnham College'
Newnham College Library has recently acquired a collection of around 450 books by and about women engravers, assembled by alumna and engraver Patricia Jaffé. This essay will explore the process by which Jaffé assembled her collection, and the story it tells about the history of women wood engravers. It will outline some of the joys and challenges of cataloguing a collection, spanning the 20th century and featuring over 100 artists, in which the textual content of the books is of secondary importance to their illustrations. It will also look at which engravers were included in and which excluded from the collection, and discuss the potential for expansion in the future.
Contact details: sasha.gardner@newn.cam.ac.uk
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Built with Shorthand