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The WH Smith Literary Award was an award founded in 1959 by British high street retailer W H Smith to "encourage and bring international esteem to authors of the British Commonwealth". Originally open to all residents of the UK, the Commonwealth and Ireland, it later admitted foreign works in translation and works by US authors. The final three winners were Americans (Philip Roth, Donna Tartt and Richard Powers), and 2005 was the award's final year.^[1]

The "W H Smith Illustration Award" ran from 1987 to 1994.

The "W H Smith Mind-Boggling Book Award" for children's literature ran from 1993 to 1996.

W H Smith sponsors the National Book Awards Children's Book of the Year (the "British Children's Book Award" through 2009).

Winners

• 1959: Patrick White, Voss
• 1960: Laurie Lee, Cider With Rosie
• 1961: Nadine Gordimer, Friday's Footprint
• 1962: J. R. Ackerley, We Think the World of You
• 1963: Gabriel Fielding, The Birthday King
• 1964: Ernst H. Gombrich, Meditations on a Hobby-Horse
• 1965: Leonard Woolf, Beginning Again
• 1966: R. C. Hutchinson, A Child Possessed
• 1967: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
• 1968: V. S. Naipaul, The Mimic Men
• 1969: Robert Gittings, John Keats
• 1970: John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
• 1971: Nan Fairbrother, New Lives, New Landscapes
• 1972: Kathleen Raine, The Lost Country
• 1973: Brian Moore, Catholics
• 1974: Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings
• 1975: Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen
• 1976: Seamus Heaney, North
• 1977: Ronald Lewin, Slim: The Standardbearer
• 1978: Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts
• 1979: Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House
• 1980: Thom Gunn, Selected Poems 1950–1975
• 1981: Isabel Colegate, The Shooting Party
• 1982: George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna
• 1983: A. N. Wilson, Wise Virgin
• 1984: Philip Larkin, Required Writing
• 1985: David Hughes, The Pork Butcher
• 1986: Doris Lessing, The Good Terrorist
• 1987: Elizabeth Jennings, Collected Poems 1953–1985
• 1988: Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore
• 1989: Christopher Hill, A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People: John Bunyan and His Church
• 1990: V. S. Pritchett, A Careless Widow and Other Stories
• 1991: Derek Walcott, Omeros
• 1992: Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa
• 1993: Michèle Roberts, Daughters of the House
• 1994: Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
• 1995: Alice Munro, Open Secrets
• 1996: Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory
• 1997: Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution – 1891–1924
• 1998: Ted Hughes, Tales From Ovid
• 1999: Beryl Bainbridge, Master Georgie
• 2000: Melvyn Bragg, The Soldier's Return
• 2001: Philip Roth, The Human Stain
• 2002: Ian McEwan, Atonement
• 2003: Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
• 2004: Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing
• 2005: Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

WH Smith Mind-Boggling Book Award

For a few years, W H Smith also offered a children's book award. The judges were children between nine and twelve, and the intention was to promote books which were "accessible to children in content and price, as well as offering a gripping read."^[2]

The winners were:

• 1993: Philip Ridley, Krindlekrax
• 1994: Malorie Blackman, Hacker
• 1995: Maggie Prince, Memoirs of a Dangerous Alien
• 1996: Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons

References