Student Book-Collecting Prizes in the UK

Book collecting prizes for students have restarted in the UK after a Covid-enforced lapse. Earlier this year, the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association awarded its National Book Collecting Prize to Karissa Adams from the University of Edinburgh for her collection ‘Leonora Carrington: A Surreal Life.’ Meanwhile the 2021 James D. Forbes Collecting Prize at the University of St. Andrews was awarded to postgraduate Paul Thompson who presented his collection of lesbian pulp alongside his essay, “From Salt to Satan: An introduction to a collection of ‘lesbian pulp’ as cultural items.” And finally, the Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize, open to all students at London-based universities, was won by Daniel Haynes for his collection ‘The money earned by herself: women artists of the Roycroft Press.'

Coming up in 2022, the winner of the Rose Book-Collecting Prize, open to undergraduate and postgraduate students of the University of Cambridge, will take home £500 to further their own book collection plus a decade of free membership of the Friends of Cambridge University Library. The deadline for a 2022 application is January 28. The most recent winner, in 2019, was Mathias Gjesdal Hammer for his collection of books of contemporary photobooks, and previous winners have featured 'Primary sources in the history of mathematics and physics' and 'Small press poetry, mostly British.’
 
Undergraduates and postgraduates at the University of Oxford can enter the Colin Franklin Prize for Book Collecting offered by the Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book. The two-part prize comprises a £600 award for the winner plus £300 to fund a book selected by the winner to be bought for the Bodleian Library’s collections. The deadline for this one is March 18, 2022.