Saturday 14 November 2009

Briggs Award winner

The Judging Panel commended Ronald Hutton's book Blood and Mistletoe (Yale UP) as a further contribution to his ongoing work on the origins of contemporary witchcraft.
They noted Owen Davies's Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford UP), strong bibliographical work, as Runner-Up,
The winner of the 2009 Katharine Briggs Award is Kathryn Marsh for The Musical Playground: Global Tradition and Change in Children's Songs and Games (Oxford UP). Building on work by Iona and Peter Opie, Julia Bishop and Mavis Curtis among others, this is a serious and impressive book on change and development in childlore. The Panel's full citation will be published in Folklore, but I'd like to add my congratulations.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for the update Paul.

    I'm ashamed to admit that the only book I've read from the shortlist is Professor Davies' Grimoires. (Apart from a quick flick through Edward Bever's Realities of Witchcraft and Magic). For what its worth I think that Grimoires is an amazing scholarly achievement. Perhaps it will be to the history of magical literatue what Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic was to the history of popular beliefs. Kathryn Marsh's book must surely be a fine piece of work, and I look forward to seeing how it compares to Iona and Peter Opie's classic.

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