This prestigious prize is awarded for a book in the field of French studies, published by a scholar based in an institution of higher education in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The prize is jointly awarded by the Society for French Studies and the R. H. Gapper Charitable Trust. The criteria for award of the prize are, broadly, the book’s critical and scholarly distinction and its likely impact on wider critical debate. In assessing these, the following qualities will be taken into account: scope and range; intellectual ambition; originality; coherence and persuasiveness; depth of scholarship; eloquence.
Awarded the 2007 R. H. Gapper Book Prize for Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006).