Frank Watson Book Prize
2021 Winner
The Frank Watson Book Prize for the best book or monograph published on Scottish History in 2019 and 2020 has been awarded to:
Fiona Edmonds, Gaelic Influence in the Northumbrian Kingdom: The Golden Age and the Viking Age. (Boydell, 2019). ISBN: 9781783273362.
The prize committee is very pleased to honour Dr. Edmonds alongside the past winners of this prestigious prize.
The Frank Watson Book Prize is awarded in odd-numbered years for the best monograph, edited collection and/or book-length original work on Scottish History published in the previous two years. The prize consists of a cash award, an invitation to present a plenary lecture and permission to advertise success in the competition.
Past Winners
2019: Tim Shannon, Indian Captive, Indian King: Peter Williamson in America and Britain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
2019 "Honorary Mention": Aaron Allen, Building Early Modern Edinburgh: A Social History of Craftwork and Incorporation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
2019 "Best First Book": Valerie Wallace, Scottish Presbyterianism and Settler Colonial Politics (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
2017: David G. Barrie and Susan Broomhall, Police Courts in Nineteenth-Century Scotland (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015).
2017 "Highly Commended First Book": Matthew P. Dziennik, The Fatal Land. War, Empire and the Highland Soldier in British America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).
2015 - Allan Kennedy, Governing Gaeldom: The Scottish Highlands and the Restoration State, 1660-1688 (Northern World, Leiden: Brill, 2014).
2015 "Highly Commended": David H. Caldwell and Mark A. Hall (eds.), The Lewis Chessmen: New Perspectives (Edinburgh: National Museums Scotland, 2014).
2015 "Highly Commended First Book": Siobhan Talbott, Conflict, Commerce and Franco-Scottish Relations, 1560-1713 (London and Brookfield, VT: Pickering & Chatto, 2014).
2013: Marjory Harper, Scotland No More? The Scots who Left Scotland in the 20th Century (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2012).
2011: Diarmid A. Finnegan, Natural History Societies and Civic Culture in Victorian Scotland (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009).
2011 "Highly Commended": S. Karly Kehoe, Creating a Scottish Church: Catholicism, Gender and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century Scotland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).
Mark R. M. Towsey, Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and Their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750-1820 (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishing, 2010).
2009: John J. McGavin, Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
2009 "Highly Commended": Roger L. Emerson, Academic Patronage in the Scottish Enlightenment: Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews Universities (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).
2009 "Highly Commended First Book": David G. Barrie, Police in the Age of Improvement: Police Development and the Civic Tradition in Scotland, 1775-1865 (Uffculme: Willan Publishing, 2008).
2007: Richard B. Sher, The Enlightenment & the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, & America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
2005: David Stevenson, The Hunt for Rob Roy: The Man and the Myths (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 2004).
2003: Richard Rodger, The Transformation of Edinburgh: Land, Property and Trust in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
2001: Keith Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family, and Culture from the Reformation to the Revolution (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000).
1999: Callum G. Brown, Up-helly-aa: Custom, Culture and Community in Shetland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998).
1997: Allan I. Macinnes, Clanship, Commerce, and the House of Stuart, 1603-1788 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1996).
1995: Carol Eddington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994).
1993: David Allen, Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment: Ideas of Scholarship in Early Modern History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993).