Posted on 25 September 2015
The Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS) administers and awards a number of memorial prizes for the best Welsh research-based publications. This year, two of the prizes have been awarded – The Vernam Hull Memorial Prize, and The Sir Ellis Griffith Memorial Prize.
Awarded for a completed work dealing with Welsh Prose before 1700, or to enable research or study to be undertaken in that field, the 2014 Vernam Hull Memorial Prize and £1,000 prize money, has been awarded to Dr Richard Glyn Roberts for his publication of Diarhebion Llyfr Coch Hergest (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2014). His publication is a first edition of the collection of proverbs found in Llyfr Coch Hergest deriving from circa 1400, set in their context with the aid of medieval texts in many languages, including examples found in the work of later authors.
The Vernam Hull Memorial Prize is provided by an income of a bequest of Ten Thousand Dollars by the late Dr Vernam Edward Nunnemacher Hull (1894-1976), Professor of Celtic Languages at Harvard University. Dr Hull was awarded the degree of DLitt honoris causa by the University of Wales at the International Congress of Celtic Studies in 1963.
The 2014 Ellis Griffiths Memorial Prize has been awarded to Dr Rhiannon Marks. The prize, totalling £250, is awarded to a person who, in the judges’ opinion, produced the best work in Welsh on authors writing in Welsh or their work, or on Welsh artists or Welsh craftsmen, or their respective work.
Rhiannon received the award for her well received book ‘Pe gallwn, mi luniwn lythyr’: golwg ar waith Menna Elfyn (University of Wales Press, 2013). The experimental volume of literary criticism offers various interpretations of the work of the poet Menna Elfyn, and gives an outline of our relationship with literature and our reading habits. It is an attempt to provide a fresh interpretation of the work by experimenting for the first time in Welsh with the epistolary method of criticism, through a series of fictional letters.
The Ellis Griffith Prize is provided from a Fund raised mainly in Anglesey and London to perpetuate the memory of the late Right Honourable Sir Ellis Jones Ellis Griffith MA KC PC (1860-1926), a former Member of Parliament who represented the County of Anglesey for many years.
Congratulations to both recipients.
For more information about the prizes, please contact the Centre – www.wales.ac.uk/CAWCS