LITERARY PRIZE

Southland Times, Issue 23840, 10 June 1939, Page 14

LITERARY PRIZE

AWARD TO ROBERT GRAVES Robert Graves has been awarded the Stock Femina Vie Heureuse Prize (formerly the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize) for his novel, “Count Belisarius.” The runners-up were Stephen Spender, with “Trial of a Judge” and D. H. Omanney, with “South Latitude.” . These three books were selected by a British committee of literary women, and out of them a French committee, similarly composed, made the final choice. The British selection committee has Sylvia Lynd as its president and Helen Simpson as its vice-president. Among other members of it are Lady Dilke, Rosamund Lehmann, Kate O’Brien, Rebecca West, Winifred Stephens Whale, Amabel Williams-Ellis and Margaret Woods.

The prize, whose value is £4O, is given annually for the best work of imagination in English published by an author whose work has hitherto not received sufficient recognition. Some of out critics regard it as of no importance, but a list of previous awards would show that it has actually rendered a real service to literature by drawing public attention to writers whose merits might otherwise have been overlooked. Among the names on the roll are those of Rose Macaulay, Percy Lubbock, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, H. M. Tomlinson, Charles Morgan and Stella Benson.