Heinemann Award

The W. H. Heinemann Award is an award established by William Heinemann who bequeathed funds to the Royal Society of Literature to establish a literary prize, given from 1945 to 2003.

Awards list

• 1945 A Prospect of Flowers, botanical reminiscences by Andrew Young, poet and vicar of Stonegate in Sussex
• 1946 The Garden by Vita Sackville-West
• 1947 Letters to Malaya by Martyn Skinner
• 1948 Selected Poems by John Betjeman
• 1951 Gormenghast and The Glassblowers by Mervyn Peake
• 1952 The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
• 1953 Edwin Muir
• 1954 The Ermine: poems, 1942–1952 by Ruth Pitter (joint winner)
• 1954 The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley (joint winner)
• 1955 Song at the Year's Turning by R. S. Thomas
• 1956 Roman Mornings by James Lees-Milne
• 1958 The Chequer'd Shade by John Press
• 1959 The Devil's Advocate by Morris West
• 1961 The Masks of Love by Vernon Scannell
• 1961 The Hashemite Kings by Jan Morris
• 1962 Curmantle by Christopher Fry
• 1962 The Destruction of Lord Raglan by Christopher Hibbert
• 1963 Mrs. Browning: A Poet's Work and Its Setting by Alethea Hayter
• 1964 The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger
• 1965 Journey from Obscurity: Wildred Owen, 1893-1919 by Harold Owen
• 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• 1967 Charlotte Bronte: The Evolution of Genius by Winifred Gérin
• 1968 George Eliot: A Biography by Gordon S. Haight
• 1969 Sir William Hamilton: Envoy Extraordinary by Brian Fothergill
• 1969 V. S. Pritchett
• 1970 Britain and Her Army by Corelli Barnett
• 1971 Granite Island: Portrait of Corsica by Dorothy Carrington
• 1972 Mercian Hymns by Geoffrey Hill
• 1973 The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally
• 1974 Mooncranker's Gift by Barry Unsworth
• 1974 Eclipse by Nicholas Wollaston
• 1975 William Wilberforce by Robin Furneaux
• 1976 Angels at the Ritz by William Trevor
• 1978 The First Fabians by Norman Ian MacKenzie and Jeanne MacKenzie
• 1979 Live Bait and Other Stories by Frank Tuohy
• 1979 Beckford of Fonthill by Brian Fothergill
• 1980 Moortown by Ted Hughes
• 1981 Old Glory: An American Voyage by Jonathan Raban
• 1983 Fortunate Traveller by Derek Walcott
• 1984 T.S. Eliot: A Life by Peter Ackroyd (joint winner)
• 1984 Eleni by Nicholas Gage (joint winner)
• 1985 Secrets of a Woman's Heart: Later Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett, 1920–69 by Hilary Spurling
• 1986 The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
• 1988 The Russian Album by Michael Ignatieff
• 1989 Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography by Margaret Forster
• 1990 Short Afternoons by Kit Wright
• 1991 Ford Maddox Ford by Alan Judd
• 1994 The Handless Maiden by Vicki Feaver
• 1995 Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer by Patrick French (joint winner)
• 1995 Paul Durcan (joint winner)
• 1996 The Shadow of Hiroshima and Other Film/Poems by Tony Harrison
• 1997 Victor Hugo by Graham Robb
• 1998 Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1804–1834 by Richard Holmes
• 2001 Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia by Catherine Merridale
• 2002 Charles Darwin: The Power of Place by Janet Browne
• 2003 Primo Levi by Ian Thomson
• 2004 Power and Glory by Adam Nicolson