108-459: Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize -winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England . In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Observer in 2012 placed her final novel, The Blue Flower , among "the ten best historical novels ". A.S. Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for precision and invention." Penelope Fitzgerald
216-443: A charitable foundation run by Sir Michael Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman – then announced it would sponsor the award for five years, with the option to renew for another five years. The award title was changed to simply "The Booker Prize". In 2019, despite having been unequivocally warned against doing so, the foundation's jury – under the chair Peter Florence – split the prize, awarding it to two authors, in breach of
324-465: A Reader Pass. The Library has been criticised for admitting numbers of undergraduate students, who have access to their own university libraries, to the reading rooms. The Library replied that it has always admitted undergraduates as long as they have a legitimate personal, work-related or academic research purpose. The majority of catalogue entries can be found on Explore the British Library,
432-760: A daily shuttle service. Construction work on the Additional Storage Building was completed in 2013 and the newspaper library at Colindale closed on 8 November 2013. The collection has now been split between the St Pancras and Boston Spa sites. The British Library Document Supply Service (BLDSS) and the Library's Document Supply Collection is based on the same site in Boston Spa. Collections housed in Yorkshire, comprising low-use material and
540-665: A handful of exhibition-style items in a proprietary format, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels . This includes the facility to "turn the virtual pages" of a few documents, such as Leonardo da Vinci 's notebooks. Catalogue entries for many of the illuminated manuscript collections are available online, with selected images of pages or miniatures from a growing number of them, and there is a database of significant bookbindings . British Library Sounds provides free online access to over 60,000 sound recordings. The British Library's commercial secure electronic delivery service
648-422: A homeless centre and for eleven years in public housing. To provide for her family in the 1960s, Fitzgerald taught at a drama school, Italia Conti Academy , and at Queen's Gate School , where her pupils included Camilla Shand (later Queen Camilla ). She also taught "at a posh crammer ", where her pupils included Anna Wintour , Edward St Aubyn , and Helena Bonham Carter . Indeed, she continued to teach until she
756-465: A judge; in 2001, she called the prize "a pile of crooked nonsense" with the winner determined by "who knows who, who's sleeping with who, who's selling drugs to who, who's married to who, whose turn it is". In 1997, the decision to award Arundhati Roy 's The God of Small Things proved controversial. Carmen Callil , chair of the previous year's Booker judges, called it an "execrable" book and said on television that it should not even have been on
864-637: A jury badly split over Ian McEwan 's novel On Chesil Beach . The following year it was India's turn again, with Aravind Adiga narrowly defeating Enright's fellow Irishman Sebastian Barry . Historically, the winner of the Booker Prize had been required to be a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations , the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe. It was announced on 18 September 2013 that future Booker Prize awards would consider authors from anywhere in
972-535: A letter to The Guardian requesting that the prize be given to him so that he could use the money to buy every copy of the longlisted books in Ireland and donate them to libraries, "thus ensuring that the books not only are bought but also read – surely a unique occurrence". Judging for the 1983 award produced a draw between J. M. Coetzee 's Life & Times of Michael K and Salman Rushdie 's Shame , leaving chair of judges Fay Weldon to choose between
1080-468: A million discs and 185,000 tapes. The collections come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound, from music, drama and literature to oral history and wildlife sounds, stretching back over more than 100 years. The Sound Archive's online catalogue is updated daily. It is possible to listen to recordings from the collection in selected Reading Rooms in the Library through their SoundServer and Listening and Viewing Service , which
1188-572: A minor character. The Beginning of Spring (1988) takes place in Moscow in 1913. It examines the world just before the Russian Revolution through the family and work troubles of a British businessman born and raised in Russia. The Gate of Angels (1990), about a young Cambridge physicist who falls in love with a nursing trainee after a bicycle accident, is set in 1912, when physics
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#17327753529031296-414: A number of titles based on their longlisting history (previously they could submit two). Non-longlisted publishers can submit one title, publishers with one or two longlisted books in the previous five years can submit two, publishers with three or four longlisted books are allowed three submissions, and publishers with five or more longlisted books can have four submissions. In addition, previous winners of
1404-739: A permanent home for the archives from 1968 to present at Oxford Brookes University Library. The Archive, which encompasses the administrative history of the Prize from 1968 to date, collects together a diverse range of material, including correspondence, publicity material, copies of both the Longlists and the Shortlists, minutes of meetings, photographs and material relating to the awards dinner (letters of invitation, guest lists, seating plans). Embargoes of ten or twenty years apply to certain categories of material; examples include all material relating to
1512-621: A programme for content acquisition and adds some three million items each year occupying 9.6 kilometres (6 mi) of new shelf space. Prior to 1973, the Library was part of the British Museum , also in the Borough of Camden . The Library's modern purpose-built building stands next to St Pancras station on Euston Road in Somers Town , on the site of a former goods yard. There is an additional storage building and reading room in
1620-602: A room devoted solely to Magna Carta , as well as several Qur'ans and Asian items. In addition to the permanent exhibition, there are frequent thematic exhibitions which have covered maps, sacred texts, history of the English language, and law, including a celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta . In May 2005, the British Library received a grant of £1 million from the London Development Agency to change two of its reading rooms into
1728-620: A rule established in 1993. Florence justified the decision, saying: "We came down to a discussion with the director of the Booker Prize about the rules. And we were told quite firmly that the rules state that you can only have one winner ... and as we have managed the jury all the way through on the principle of consensus, our consensus was that it was our decision to flout the rules and divide this year's prize to celebrate two winners." The two were British writer Bernardine Evaristo for her novel Girl, Woman, Other and Canadian writer Margaret Atwood for The Testaments . Evaristo's win marked
1836-608: A secure network in constant communication automatically replicate, self-check, and repair data. A complete crawl of every .uk domain (and other TLDs with UK based server GeoIP ) has been added annually to the DLS since 2013, which also contains all of the Internet Archive 's 1996–2013 .uk collection. The policy and system is based on that of the Bibliothèque nationale de France , which has crawled (via IA until 2010)
1944-702: A shared technical infrastructure implementing the Digital Library System developed by the British Library. The DLS was in anticipation of the Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013, an extension of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 to include non-print electronic publications from 6 April 2013. Four storage nodes, located in London, Boston Spa , Aberystwyth , and Edinburgh , linked via
2052-446: A small number of literary insiders is controversial for many. The Guardian introduced the "Not the Booker Prize" voted for by readers partly as a reaction to this. Author Amit Chaudhuri wrote: "The idea that a 'book of the year' can be assessed annually by a bunch of people – judges who have to read almost a book a day – is absurd, as is the idea that this is any way of honouring a writer." The author Julian Barnes once dismissed
2160-605: Is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom . It is one of the largest libraries in the world . It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in
2268-480: Is a large piazza that includes pieces of public art , such as large sculptures by Eduardo Paolozzi (a bronze statue based on William Blake 's study of Isaac Newton ) and Antony Gormley . It is the largest public building constructed in the United Kingdom in the 20th century. In the middle of the building is a six-storey glass tower inspired by a similar structure in the Beinecke Library , containing
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#17327753529032376-497: Is available in hard copy and via online databases. Staff are trained to guide small and medium enterprises (SME) and entrepreneurs to use the full range of resources. In 2018, a Human Lending Library service was established in the Business & IP Centre, allowing social entrepreneurs to receive an hour's mentoring from a high-profile business professional. This service is run in partnership with Expert Impact. Stephen Fear
2484-693: Is based in the Rare Books & Music Reading Room. In 2006, the Library launched a new online resource, British Library Sounds , which makes 50,000 of the Sound Archive's recordings available online. Launched in October 2012, the British Library's moving image services provide access to nearly a million sound and moving image items onsite, supported by data for over 20 million sound and moving image recordings. The three services, which for copyright reasons can only be accessed from terminals within
2592-439: Is free of charge in hard copy and online via approximately 30 subscription databases. Registered readers can access the collection and the databases. There are over 50 million patent specifications from 40 countries in a collection dating back to 1855. The collection also includes official gazettes on patents, trade marks and Registered Design ; law reports and other material on litigation ; and information on copyright . This
2700-596: Is the only one that must automatically receive a copy of every item published in Britain; the others are entitled to these items, but must specifically request them from the publisher after learning that they have been or are about to be published, a task done centrally by the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries . Further, under the terms of Irish copyright law (most recently the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000),
2808-547: The .fr domain annually (62 TBs in 2015) since 2006. On 28 October 2023 the British Library's entire website went down due to a cyber attack, later confirmed as a ransomware attack attributed to ransomware group Rhysida . Catalogues and ordering systems were affected, rendering the great majority of the library's collections inaccessible to readers. The library released statements saying that their services would be disrupted for several weeks, with some disruption expected to persist for several months. As at January 2024,
2916-536: The Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives £ 50,000, as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When
3024-641: The British Library in June 2017. It consists of 170 files of correspondence and papers relating to her literary works, and of correspondence and other items belonging to family members, including her father, E. V. Knox, and papers of Fitzgerald's Literary Estate. Many of her literary papers, including research notes, manuscript drafts letters, and photographs are held in the Harry Ransom Center . Fitzgerald launched her literary career in 1975 at
3132-908: The Commonwealth were also considered. In 2008, the winner for 1948 was Alan Paton 's Cry, the Beloved Country , beating Norman Mailer 's The Naked and the Dead , Graham Greene 's The Heart of the Matter and Evelyn Waugh 's The Loved One . In 2015, the winner for 1915 was Ford Madox Ford 's The Good Soldier , beating The Thirty-Nine Steps ( John Buchan ), Of Human Bondage ( W. Somerset Maugham ), Psmith, Journalist ( P. G. Wodehouse ) and The Voyage Out ( Virginia Woolf ). British Library 13,950,000 books 824,101 serial titles 351,116 manuscripts (single and volumes) 8,266,276 philatelic items 4,347,505 cartographic items 1,607,885 music scores The British Library
3240-552: The HMSO Binderies became British Library responsibilities. In 1983, the Library absorbed the National Sound Archive , which holds many sound and video recordings, with over a million discs and thousands of tapes. The core of the Library's historical collections is based on a series of donations and acquisitions from the 18th century. These are known as the "foundation collections", and they include
3348-462: The King's Library with 65,000 printed volumes along with other pamphlets, manuscripts and maps collected by King George III between 1763 and 1820. In December 2009 a new storage building at Boston Spa was opened by Rosie Winterton . The new facility, costing £26 million, has a capacity for seven million items, stored in more than 140,000 bar-coded containers and which are retrieved by robots from
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3456-543: The "Booker Prize for Fiction" after the company Booker, McConnell Ltd began sponsoring the event in 1969; it became commonly known as the "Booker Prize" or the "Booker". Jock Campbell , Charles Tyrrell and Tom Maschler were instrumental in establishing the prize. When administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became the investment company Man Group , which opted to retain "Booker" as part of
3564-558: The "longlist". A sister prize, the International Booker Prize , is awarded for a work of fiction translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Unlike the Booker Prize, short story collections are eligible for the International Booker Prize. The £50,000 prize money is split evenly between the author and translator of the winning novel. The prize was established as
3672-399: The 162.7 miles of temperature and humidity-controlled storage space. On Friday, 5 April 2013, the Library announced that it would begin saving all sites with the suffix .uk in a bid to preserve the nation's " digital memory " (which as of then amounted to about 4.8 million sites containing 1 billion web pages). The Library would make all the material publicly available to users by
3780-518: The 18th and 19th centuries were made available online as the British Newspaper Archive . The project planned to scan up to 40 million pages over the next 10 years. The archive is free to search, but there is a charge for accessing the pages themselves. As of 2022, Explore the British Library is the latest iteration of the online catalogue. It contains nearly 57 million records and may be used to search, view and order items from
3888-545: The 50th anniversary, the Golden Man Booker was awarded. One book from each decade was selected by a panel of judges: Naipaul's In a Free State (the 1971 winner), Lively's Moon Tiger (1987), Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992), Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009) and Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo (2017). The winner, by popular vote, was The English Patient . Since 2014, each publisher's imprint may submit
3996-534: The Booker was awarded in 2008 to celebrate the prize's 40th anniversary. A shortlist of six winners was chosen — Rushdie's Midnight's Children , Coetzee' Disgrace , Carey's Oscar and Lucinda , Gordimer's The Conservationist , Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur , and Barker's The Ghost Road — and the decision was left to a public vote; the winner was again Midnight's Children . In 2018, to celebrate
4104-478: The Booker Prize Foundation each year to choose the winning book. As of 2024, the chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation is Gaby Wood . A high-profile literary award in British culture , the Booker Prize is greeted with anticipation and fanfare around the world. Literary critics have noted that it is a mark of distinction for authors to be selected for inclusion in the shortlist or to be nominated for
4212-416: The Booker Prize. This was rectified in 2010 by the awarding of the " Lost Man Booker Prize " to J. G. Farrell 's Troubles . In 1993, a special Booker of Bookers prize was awarded to mark the prize's 25th anniversary. Three previous judges of the award, Malcolm Bradbury , David Holloway and W. L. Webb, met and chose Salman Rushdie 's Midnight's Children , the 1981 winner, as "the best novel out of all
4320-581: The Booker in either year. Forty years later, the Booker Prize Foundation announced in January 2010 the creation of a special award called the " Lost Man Booker Prize ", with the winner chosen from a longlist of 22 novels published in 1970. The prize was won by J. G. Farrell for Troubles , though the author had died in 1979. In 1972, winning writer John Berger , known for his Marxist worldview, protested during his acceptance speech against Booker McConnell. He blamed Booker's 130 years of sugar production in
4428-880: The British Library continued to experience technology outages as a result of the cyber-attack. A number of books and manuscripts are on display to the public in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery which is open seven days a week at no charge. Some manuscripts in the exhibition include Beowulf , the Lindisfarne Gospels and St Cuthbert Gospel , a Gutenberg Bible , Geoffrey Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales , Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur ( King Arthur ), Captain Cook 's journal, Jane Austen 's History of England , Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre , Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures Under Ground , Rudyard Kipling 's Just So Stories , Charles Dickens 's Nicholas Nickleby , Virginia Woolf 's Mrs Dalloway and
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4536-733: The British Library is entitled to automatically receive a free copy of every book published in Ireland, alongside the National Library of Ireland , Trinity College Library in Dublin, the library of the University of Limerick , the library of Dublin City University and the libraries of the four constituent universities of the National University of Ireland . The Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, and
4644-409: The British Library must cover a percentage of its operating costs, a fee is charged to the user. However, this service is no longer profitable and has led to a series of restructures to try to prevent further losses. When Google Books started, the British Library signed an agreement with Microsoft to digitise a number of books from the British Library for its Live Search Books project. This material
4752-483: The British Library required demolition of an integral part of Bloomsbury – a seven-acre swathe of streets immediately in front of the Museum, so that the Library could be situated directly opposite. After a long and hard-fought campaign led by Dr George Wagner, this decision was overturned and the library was instead constructed by John Laing plc on a site at Euston Road next to St Pancras railway station . Following
4860-545: The Business & IP Centre. The centre was opened in March 2006. It holds arguably the most comprehensive collection of business and intellectual property (IP) material in the United Kingdom and is the official library of the UK Intellectual Property Office . The collection is divided up into four main information areas: market research , company information, trade directories, and journals . It
4968-551: The Caribbean for the region's modern poverty. Berger donated half of his £5,000 prize to the British Black Panther movement , because it had a socialist and revolutionary perspective in agreement with his own. In 1980, Anthony Burgess , writer of Earthly Powers , refused to attend the ceremony unless it was confirmed to him in advance whether he had won. His was one of two books considered likely to win,
5076-533: The Document Supply Collection are held electronically and can be downloaded immediately. The collection supports research and development in UK, overseas and international industry, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry . BLDSS also provides material to Higher Education institutions, students and staff and members of the public, who can order items through their Public Library or through
5184-745: The International Booker Prize since the Man Group ended its association with the prizes in 2019. A Russian version of the Booker Prize was created in 1992 called the Booker-Open Russia Literary Prize , also known as the Russian Booker Prize. In 2007, Man Group plc established the Man Asian Literary Prize , an annual literary award given to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English, and published in
5292-484: The Library announced that it would be moving low-use items to a new storage facility in Boston Spa in Yorkshire and that it planned to close the newspaper library at Colindale, ahead of a later move to a similar facility on the same site. From January 2009 to April 2012 over 200 km of material was moved to the Additional Storage Building and is now delivered to British Library Reading Rooms in London on request by
5400-505: The Library's BL Document Supply Service (BLDSS). The Document Supply Service also offers Find it For Me and Get it For Me services which assist researchers in accessing hard-to-find material. In April 2013, BLDSS launched its new online ordering and tracking system, which enables customers to search available items, view detailed availability, pricing and delivery time information, place and track orders, and manage account preferences online. The British Library Sound Archive holds more than
5508-556: The Library's main catalogue, which is based on Primo. Other collections have their own catalogues, such as western manuscripts. The large reading rooms offer hundreds of seats which are often filled with researchers, especially during the Easter and summer holidays. British Library Reader Pass holders are also able to view the Document Supply Collection in the Reading Room at the Library's site in Boston Spa in Yorkshire as well as
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#17327753529035616-879: The NLL became part of the British Library in 1973 it changed its name to the British Library Lending Division, in 1985 it was renamed as the British Library Document Supply Centre and is now known as the British Library Document Supply Service, often abbreviated as BLDSS. BLDSS now holds 87.5 million items, including 296,000 international journal titles, 400,000 conference proceedings, 3 million monographs , 5 million official publications, and 500,000 UK and North American theses and dissertations. 12.5 million articles in
5724-628: The National Libraries of Scotland and Wales are also entitled to copies of material published in Ireland, but again must formally make requests. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 extended United Kingdom legal deposit requirements to electronic documents, such as CD-ROMs and selected websites. The Library also holds the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (APAC) which include the India Office Records and materials in
5832-658: The Reading Rooms at St Pancras or Boston Spa, are: The Library holds an almost complete collection of British and Irish newspapers since 1840. This is partly because of the legal deposit legislation of 1869, which required newspapers to supply a copy of each edition of a newspaper to the library. London editions of national daily and Sunday newspapers are complete back to 1801. In total, the collection consists of 660,000 bound volumes and 370,000 reels of microfilm containing tens of millions of newspapers with 52,000 titles on 45 km (28 mi) of shelves. From earlier dates,
5940-638: The United Kingdom. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport . The British Library is a major research library , with items in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and items dating as far back as 2000 BC. The library maintains
6048-577: The age of 58, with "scholarly, accessible biographies " of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones and two years later of The Knox Brothers , her father and uncles, although she never mentions herself by name. Later in 1977 she published her first novel, The Golden Child , a comic murder mystery with a museum setting inspired by the Tutankhamun mania of the 1970s, written to amuse her terminally ill husband, who died in 1976. Over
6156-429: The appointed jury to make the award to just a single author/book. The choice of James Kelman 's book How Late It Was, How Late as 1994 Booker Prize winner proved to be one of the most controversial in the award's history. Rabbi Julia Neuberger , one of the judges, declared it "a disgrace" and left the event, later deeming the book to be "crap"; WHSmith 's marketing manager called the award "an embarrassment to
6264-741: The bar and enlisted as a soldier in the Irish Guards . Six months later, Desmond's regiment was sent to North Africa . He won the Military Cross in the Western Desert Campaign in Libya , but returned to civilian life an alcoholic . In the early 1950s the couple lived in Hampstead , London, where she had grown up. They co-edited a magazine called World Review , in which J. D. Salinger 's "For Esmé with Love and Squalor"
6372-590: The books and manuscripts: For many years its collections were dispersed in various buildings around central London , in places such as Bloomsbury (within the British Museum), Chancery Lane , Bayswater , and Holborn , with an interlibrary lending centre at Boston Spa , 2.5 miles (4 km) east of Wetherby in West Yorkshire (situated on Thorp Arch Trading Estate), and the newspaper library at Colindale , north-west London. Initial plans for
6480-413: The books that have been submitted. (In 2023, the judges read 163 books over seven months. ) After doing so, they select a longlist of 12 or 13 titles (the "Booker Dozen"), before each reading those books for a second time. They then select a shortlist of six titles, and read the six books a third time before selecting a winner. The Booker judging process and the very concept of a "best book" being chosen by
6588-427: The branch library near Boston Spa in Yorkshire. The St Pancras building was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 25 June 1998, and is classified as a Grade I listed building "of exceptional interest" for its architecture and history. The British Library was created on 1 July 1973 as a result of the British Library Act 1972. Prior to this, the national library was part of the British Museum , which provided
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#17327753529036696-400: The bulk of the holdings of the new library, alongside smaller organisations which were folded in (such as the National Central Library , the National Lending Library for Science and Technology and the British National Bibliography ). In 1974 functions previously exercised by the Office for Scientific and Technical Information were taken over; in 1982 the India Office Library and Records and
6804-410: The chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, chooses the judges in consultation with an advisory committee made up of senior figures from the UK publishing industry. On rare occasions a judge may be selected a second time. Judges are selected from amongst leading literary critics, writers, academics and leading public figures. Unlike some other literary prizes, each judge is expected to read all of
6912-411: The closure of the Round Reading Room on 25 October 1997 the library stock began to be moved into the St Pancras building. Before the end of that year the first of eleven new reading rooms had opened and the moving of stock was continuing. From 1997 to 2009 the main collection was housed in this single new building and the collection of British and overseas newspapers was housed at Colindale . In July 2008
7020-593: The collections include the Thomason Tracts , comprising 7,200 seventeenth-century newspapers, and the Burney Collection , featuring nearly 1 million pages of newspapers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The section also holds extensive collections of non-British newspapers, in numerous languages. The Newspapers section was based in Colindale in North London until 2013, when the buildings, which were considered to provide inadequate storage conditions and to be beyond improvement, were closed and sold for redevelopment. The physical holdings are now divided between
7128-438: The collections or search the contents of the Library's website. The Library's electronic collections include over 40,000 ejournals, 800 databases and other electronic resources. A number of these are available for remote access to registered St Pancras Reader Pass holders. PhD theses are available via the E-Theses Online Service (EThOS). In 2012, the UK legal deposit libraries signed a memorandum of understanding to create
7236-448: The end of 2013, and would ensure that, through technological advancements, all the material is preserved for future generations, despite the fluidity of the Internet. The Euston Road building was Grade I listed on 1 August 2015. It has plans to open a third location in Leeds , potentially located in the Grade 1 listed Temple Works . In England, legal deposit can be traced back to at least 1610. The Copyright Act 1911 established
7344-622: The first time the Booker had been awarded to a black woman, while Atwood's win, at 79, made her the oldest winner. Atwood had also previously won the prize in 2000. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual award ceremony was replaced with a livestream from the Roundhouse in London, without the shortlisted authors in attendance. The winner was Douglas Stuart for his debut novel Shuggie Bain , which had been rejected by more than 30 publishers. 2021's small-scale ceremony, once again impacted by COVID-19, saw South African writer Damon Galgut , who had been shortlisted in 2003 and 2010, win
7452-442: The following year. In 2018, publishers sought to reverse the change, arguing that the inclusion of American writers would lead to homogenisation, reducing diversity and opportunities everywhere, including in America, to learn about "great books that haven't already been widely heralded". Man Group announced in early 2019 that the year's prize would be the last of eighteen under their sponsorship. A new sponsor, Crankstart –
7560-399: The goose that lays your golden eggs." In 1988, Peter Carey won the first of his two Booker Prizes for Oscar and Lucinda (which would later be shortlisted for The Best of the Booker ). In 1992, the jury split the prize between Michael Ondaatje 's The English Patient and Barry Unsworth 's Sacred Hunger . This prompted the foundation to draw up a rule that made it mandatory for
7668-406: The hard-copy newspaper collection from 29 September 2014. Now that access is available to legal deposit collection material, it is necessary for visitors to register as a Reader to use the Boston Spa Reading Room. The British Library makes a number of images of items within its collections available online. Its Online Gallery gives access to 30,000 images from various medieval books, together with
7776-618: The judging process and the Longlist prior to 2002. Between 2005 and 2008, the Booker Prize alternated between writers from Ireland and India. "Outsider" John Banville began this trend in 2005 when his novel The Sea was selected as a surprise winner: Boyd Tonkin , literary editor of The Independent , famously condemned it as "possibly the most perverse decision in the history of the award" and rival novelist Tibor Fischer poured scorn on Banville's victory. Kiran Desai of India won in 2006. Anne Enright 's 2007 victory came about due to
7884-423: The languages of Asia and of north and north-east Africa. The Library is open to everyone who has a genuine need to use its collections. Anyone with a permanent address who wishes to carry out research can apply for a Reader Pass; they are required to provide proof of signature and address. Historically, only those wishing to use specialised material unavailable in other public or academic libraries would be given
7992-565: The newspaper and Document Supply collections, make up around 70% of the total material the library holds. The Library previously had a book storage depot in Woolwich , south-east London, which is no longer in use. The new library was designed specially for the purpose by the architect Colin St John Wilson in collaboration with his wife MJ Long , who came up with the plan that was subsequently developed and built. Facing Euston Road
8100-401: The next five years she published four novels, each tied to her own experiences. The Bookshop (1978), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize , concerns a struggling store in a fictional East Anglian town. Set in 1959, it includes as a pivotal event the shop's decision to stock Lolita . A 2017 film adaptation, also entitled The Bookshop , stars Emily Mortimer as Florence Green. It
8208-427: The novelist and biographer Winifred Peck . Fitzgerald later wrote: "When I was young I took my father and my three uncles for granted, and it never occurred to me that everyone else wasn't like them. Later on, I found that this was a mistake, but I've never quite managed to adapt myself to it. I suppose they were unusual, but I still think that they were right, and insofar as the world disagrees with them, I disagree with
8316-470: The number of nominees was capped at 12 or 13 each year. In 2001, Peter Carey won his second Booker Prize for True History of the Kelly Gang , a work now ranked by The Guardian as one of the 100 greatest novels written in English. Carey is one of only four writers to have won the Booker Prize twice, the others being J.M. Coetzee , Hilary Mantel , and Margaret Atwood . The Booker Prize created
8424-431: The official title of the prize. The foundation is an independent registered charity funded by the entire profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd, of which it is the sole shareholder. The prize money awarded with the Booker Prize was originally £5,000. It doubled in 1978 to £10,000 and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group, making it one of the world's richest literary prizes . Each of
8532-469: The other being Rites of Passage by William Golding . The judges decided only 30 minutes before the ceremony, giving the prize to Golding. Both novels had been seen as favourites to win leading up to the prize, and the dramatic "literary battle" between two senior writers made front-page news. Alice Munro 's The Beggar Maid was shortlisted in 1980, and remains the only short-story collection to be shortlisted. In 1981, nominee John Banville wrote
8640-462: The previous calendar year. For many years, as part of The Times 's Literature Festival in Cheltenham , a Booker event was held on the last Saturday of the festival. Four guest speakers/judges debated a shortlist of four books from a given year from before the introduction of the Booker Prize, and a winner was chosen. Unlike the real Booker Prize (1969 through 2014), writers from outside
8748-747: The principle of the legal deposit, ensuring that the British Library and five other libraries in Great Britain and Ireland are entitled to receive a free copy of every item published or distributed in Britain. The other five libraries are: the Bodleian Library at Oxford ; the University Library at Cambridge ; Trinity College Library in Dublin ; and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales . The British Library
8856-506: The prize are automatically considered if they enter new titles. Books may also be called in: publishers can make written representations to the judges to consider titles in addition to those already entered. In the 21st century the average number of books considered by the judges has been approximately 130. A separate prize for which any living writer in the world may qualify, the Man Booker International Prize ,
8964-431: The prize as "posh bingo" for the apparently arbitrary way winners are selected. On winning the prize in 2011 he joked that he had revised his opinion, telling reporters that he had realised "the judges are the wisest heads in literary Christendom". For many years, the winner was announced at a formal, black-tie dinner in London's Guildhall in early October. However, in 2020, with COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in place,
9072-497: The prize for The Promise . 2022 saw a reimagined winner ceremony at the Roundhouse, hosted by comedian Sophie Duker and featuring a keynote speech by singer Dua Lipa . The prize was won by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida . In 2023, for the first time, the shortlist featured three writers named Paul ( Paul Lynch , Paul Murray and Paul Harding ). The prize
9180-400: The prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth , Irish, and South African (and later Zimbabwean) citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial. A five-person panel consisting of authors, publishers and journalists, as well as politicians, actors, artists and musicians, is appointed by
9288-529: The prize's second year, Bernice Rubens became the first woman to win the Booker Prize, for The Elected Member . The rules of the Booker changed in 1971; previously, it had been given retrospectively, to books published in the year prior to each award. In 1971, eligibility was changed to make the year of a novel's publication the same as the year of the award, which was made in November; in effect, this meant that books published in 1970 were not considered for
9396-451: The prize. In fact, he has only been shortlisted once and that was for Time's Arrow , which was not one of his strongest books. That really is suspicious. He pissed people off with Dead Babies and that gets lodged in the culture. There is also the feeling that he has always looked towards America. The selection process for the winner of the prize commences with the appointment of a panel of five judges, which changes each year. Gaby Wood,
9504-463: The shortlist. Booker Prize chairman Martyn Goff said Roy won because nobody objected, following the rejection by the judges of Bernard MacLaverty 's shortlisted book due to their dismissal of him as "a wonderful short-story writer and that Grace Notes was three short stories strung together". Before 2001, each year's longlist of nominees was not publicly revealed. From 2001, the longlisted novels started to be published each year, and in 2007
9612-513: The shortlisted authors receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The original Booker Prize trophy was designed by the artist Jan Pieńkowski and the design was revived for the 2023 prize. The first winner of the Booker Prize was P. H. Newby in 1969 for his novel Something to Answer For . W. L. Webb, The Guardian ' s Literary Editor, was chair of the inaugural set of judges, which included Rebecca West , Stephen Spender , Frank Kermode and David Farrer. In 1970,
9720-419: The things in my own life, which I wanted to write about." Instead she wrote a biography of the poet Charlotte Mew and began a series of novels with a variety of historical settings. The first was Innocence (1986), a romance between the daughter of an impoverished aristocrat and a doctor from a southern Communist family set in 1950s Florence , Italy. The Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci appears as
9828-543: The two. According to Stephen Moss in The Guardian , "Her arm was bent and she chose Rushdie", only to change her mind as the result was being phoned through. At the award ceremony, Fay Weldon used her speech to attack the assembled publishers, accusing them of exploiting and undervaluing authors. "I will ask you if in your dealings with authors you are really being fair, and honourable, and right? Or merely getting away with what you can? If you are not careful, you will kill
9936-487: The whole book trade"; Waterstones in Glasgow sold a mere 13 copies of Kelman's book the following week. In 1994, The Guardian ' s literary editor Richard Gott , citing the lack of objective criteria and the exclusion of American authors, described the prize as "a significant and dangerous iceberg in the sea of British culture that serves as a symbol of its current malaise". In 1996, A. L. Kennedy served as
10044-473: The winner ceremony was broadcast in November from the Roundhouse , in partnership with the BBC . The ceremony returned to the Roundhouse for a more casual in-person ceremony in 2022, before moving to Old Billingsgate in London in 2023. In 1971, the nature of the prize was changed so that it was awarded to novels published in that year instead of in the previous year; therefore, no novel published in 1970 could win
10152-474: The winners". In 2006, the Man Booker Prize set up a "Best of Beryl" prize, for the author Beryl Bainbridge , who had been nominated five times and yet failed to win once. The prize is said to count as a Booker Prize. The nominees were An Awfully Big Adventure , Every Man for Himself , The Bottle Factory Outing , The Dressmaker and Master Georgie , which won. Similarly, The Best of
10260-575: The world, so long as their work was in English and published in the UK. This change proved controversial in literary circles. Former winner A. S. Byatt and former judge John Mullan said the prize risked diluting its identity, whereas former judge A. L. Kennedy welcomed the change. Following this expansion, the first winner not from the Commonwealth, Ireland, or Zimbabwe was American Paul Beatty in 2016. Another American, George Saunders , won
10368-583: The world." She was educated at Wycombe Abbey , an independent girls' boarding school, and Somerville College , Oxford University , where she graduated in 1938 with a congratulatory First, being named a "Woman of the Year" in Isis , the student newspaper. She worked for the BBC in the Second World War . In 1942 she married Desmond Fitzgerald, whom she had met in 1940 at Oxford. He had been studying for
10476-511: Was 70 years old. For a while she worked in a bookshop in Southwold , Suffolk, and in another period lived in Battersea on a houseboat that sank twice – the second time for good, destroying many of her books and family papers. The couple had three children: a son, Valpy , and two daughters, Tina and Maria . Penelope Fitzgerald died on 28 April 2000. Fitzgerald's archive was acquired by
10584-468: Was a judge for the 1999 prize, was reported as saying in 2001: There is a well-established London literary community. Rushdie doesn't get shortlisted now because he has attacked that community. That is not a good game plan if you want to win the Booker. Norman Mailer has found the same thing in the US – you have to "be a citizen" if you want to win prizes. The real scandal is that [Martin] Amis has never won
10692-550: Was about to enter its own revolutionary period. Fitzgerald's final novel, The Blue Flower (1995), centres on the 18th-century German poet and philosopher Novalis and his love for what is portrayed as an ordinary child. Other historical figures such as the poet Goethe and the philosopher Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel , feature in the story. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award 1997 and has been called her masterpiece. In 1999 it
10800-531: Was adapted and dramatised for BBC Radio by Peter Wolf. A collection of Fitzgerald's short stories , The Means of Escape , and a volume of her essays, reviews and commentaries, A House of Air , were published posthumously. In 2013 the first full biography of Fitzgerald, Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee , appeared, and was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize . Booker Prize The Booker Prize , formerly
10908-517: Was born Penelope Mary Knox on 17 December 1916 at the Old Bishop's Palace, Lincoln , the daughter of Edmund Knox , later editor of Punch , and Christina, née Hicks, daughter of Edward Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln , and one of the first female students at Oxford . She was a niece of the theologian and crime writer Ronald Knox , the cryptographer Dillwyn Knox , the Bible scholar Wilfred Knox , and
11016-485: Was first published in the UK, as were writings of Bernard Malamud , Norman Mailer , and Alberto Moravia . Fitzgerald also contributed, writing about literature, music and sculpture. Soon afterwards Desmond was disbarred from the legal profession for "forging signatures on cheques that he cashed at the pub." This led to a life of poverty for the Fitzgeralds. At times they were even homeless , living for four months in
11124-428: Was inaugurated in 2005. Until 2015, it was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation. In 2016, the award was significantly reconfigured, and is now given annually to a single book in English translation , with a £50,000 prize for the winning title, shared equally between author and translator. The award has been known as
11232-482: Was only available to readers in the US, and closed in May 2008. The scanned books are currently available via the British Library catalogue or Amazon . In October 2010 the British Library launched its Management and business studies portal . This website is designed to allow digital access to management research reports, consulting reports, working papers and articles. In November 2011, four million newspaper pages from
11340-412: Was started in 2003 at a cost of £6 million. This offers more than 100 million items (including 280,000 journal titles, 50 million patents, 5 million reports, 476,000 US dissertations and 433,000 conference proceedings) for researchers and library patrons worldwide which were previously unavailable outside the Library because of copyright restrictions. In line with a government directive that
11448-547: Was the British Library's Entrepreneur in Residence and Ambassador from 2012 to 2016. As part of its establishment in 1973, the British Library absorbed the National Lending Library for Science and Technology (NLL), based near Boston Spa in Yorkshire, which had been established in 1961. Before this, the site had housed a World War II Royal Ordnance Factory , ROF Thorp Arch , which closed in 1957. When
11556-479: Was won by Irish writer Paul Lynch for his novel Prophet Song . In the media, reaction was mixed. In The Guardian , Justine Jordan wrote that "This is a novel written to jolt the reader awake to truths we mostly cannot bear to admit", while in The Telegraph , Cal Revely-Calder wrote that Prophet Song is "political fiction at its laziest" and "the weak link in a strong shortlist". John Sutherland , who
11664-662: Was written and directed by Isabel Coixet . Fitzgerald won the 1979 Booker Prize with Offshore , a novel set among houseboat residents in Battersea in 1961. Human Voices (1980) fictionalises wartime life at the BBC, while At Freddie's (1982) depicts life at a drama school. In 1999 Fitzgerald was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". Fitzgerald said after At Freddie's that she "had finished writing about
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