Richard L. Greaves Prize

The Richard L. Greaves Prize was established in 2004 in honour of the memory of the first president of the International John Bunyan Society, Professor Richard L. Greaves (1938-2004), and of his unrivalled contribution to the understanding of early modern Protestant culture in general and of John Bunyan in particular.  It is awarded every three years by a Committee of the IJBS for an outstanding book-length work of scholarship devoted to the history, literature, thought, practices and legacy of Anglophone Protestantism to 1700.

To be eligible for consideration, books must have been published within the three full calendar years preceding the next IJBS triennial conference.  They may be ‘critical editions, monographs, volumes of essays, dictionaries, bibliographies, catalogues… published in English or translated into English, in paper or electronic format’.

The Prize is not limited to studies of John Bunyan, and can be conferred on authors who are not members of the IJBS.

The Committee comprises a Chair and between two to four members nominated by the President of the IJBS. The judges are scholars representing disciplines in the field of early-modern Protestant studies. The Committee may also include other experts such as editors, librarians, curators, art historians, and booksellers.

Read and download the Regulations and Procedures here.

2022    6th Prize (books published 2019–2021)

President of the selection Committee: Roger Pooley (Keele University)

Members of the selection Committee: Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary, University of London) and Chad Van Dixhoorn (Westminster Theological Seminary)

Winner: N. H. Keeble, general ed.; N. H. Keeble, John Coffey, Tim Cooper, and Tom Charlton, eds, Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Honourable Mention: George Southcombe, The Culture of Dissent in Restoration England (The Royal Historical Society/The Boydell Press, 2019)

2019    5th Prize (books published 2016–2018)

President of the selection Committee: Helen Wilcox (Bangor)

Members of the selection Committee: W. R. Owens (Bedfordshire) and Tim Cooper (Otago)

Winner: Michael Davies and W. R. Owens (eds), The Oxford Handbook of John Bunyan (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Honourable Mention: Isabel Rivers, Vanity Fair and the Celestial City: Dissenting, Methodist, and Evangelical Literary Culture in England 1720-1800 (Oxford University Press, 2018)

2016    4th Prize (books published 2013–2015)

President of the selection Committee: N. H. Keeble (Stirling)

Members of the selection Committee: Ann Hughes (Keele) and Cynthia Wall (Virginia)

Winner: Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford University press, 2013)

Honourable Mention: Meredith Marie Neuman, Jeremiah’s Scribes, Creating Sermon Literature in Puritan New England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)

2013    3rd Prize (books published 2010–2012)

President of the selection Committee: David Gay (Alberta)

Members of the selection Committee: Katsuhiro Engetsu (Doshisha) and David Walker (Northumbria)

Winner: Kathleen Lynch, Protestant Autobiography in the Seventeenth-Century Anglophone World (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Honourable Mention: Tim Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of Nonconformity (Ashgate, 2011)

2010    2nd Prize (books published 2007–2009)

President of the selection Committee: Galen Johnson

Members of the selection Committee: Anne Dunan-Page (Aix-Marseille) and Isabel Hofmeyr (Witwatersrand)

Winner: David J. Appleby, Black Bartholomew’s Day: Preaching, Polemic and Restoration Nonconformity  (Manchester University Press, 2007).

2007    1st Prize (books published 2003-2006)

President of the selection Committee: Sylvia Brown (Alberta)

Members of the selection Committee: Sharon Achinstein (Oxford) and Nigel Smith (Princeton)

Winner: Isabel Hofmeyr, The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of The Pilgrim’s Progress (Princeton University Press, 2003)

Honourable mention: Beth Lynch, John Bunyan and the Language of Conviction (Boydell & Brewer, 2004)