Accolade for York scholar's T S Eliot investigation
Posted on 14 June 2006
Professor Lawrence Rainey, of the University's Department of English and Related Literature has been chosen as the winner of the Robert Motherwell Book Award for 2006 for his books, Revisiting 'The Waste Land' and The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose.
The $20,000 award, in memory of Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) - one of the leading artists of the Abstract Expressionist movement, is given annually by the Dedalus Foundation. It recognises outstanding publications in the history and criticism of modernism in the arts.
It's a great honour to receive this award, and I'm truly grateful
Professor Lawrence Rainey
Revisiting 'The Waste Land' chronicles Professor Rainey's two years of painstaking research to solve one of the literature's enduring mysteries - the precise sequence in which Eliot wrote his poetic masterpiece.
Professor Rainey examined more than 1,200 leaves of paper, including 638 pages of letters, Eliot had written between 1912 and 1922, as well as visiting 22 international libraries and several private collections across Europe and the USA.
The FBI even gave him copies of the transparent templates the Agency uses to identify makes of typewriters, and he used a micrometer to measure the thickness of every sheet of paper. He compared data about the papers used in Eliot's letters and essays with corresponding data from The Waste Land manuscripts to reconstruct the poem's composition.
The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose presents a new and authoritative version of the poem along with the essays written as he was composing it. The book recounts the reaction of contemporary critics to the poem and provides a wealth of annotations to both The Waste Land and the essays.
Professor Rainey said: "It's a great honour to receive this award, and I'm truly grateful. It's especially gratifying to receive a prize named after Robert Motherwell, who was not only a great artist but an astute thinker about the modernist heritage."
Chair of the Robert Motherwell Book Award jury, David Rosand, praised both volumes for their "marvellous resonance" for art historians.
Notes to editors:
- The Dedalus Foundation fosters public understanding of modern art and modernism by facilitating research, education, publications, exhibitions and museum collections in this field.
- Revisiting 'The Waste Land' by Lawrence Rainey is published by Yale University Press at £22.50.
- A new paperback edition of The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose by Lawrence Rainey, published by Yale University Press, will appear on 1 August at US $17.00.
- The Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York was rated as 'excellent' in the Higher Education Funding Council's assessment of teaching quality. In the last Research Assessment Exercise, it was one of six departments of English in Britain to score the highest possible research rating of 5*A. More information at www.york.ac.uk/depts/engl/more_about.htm.