The Monroe Kirk Spears Award

THE MONROE KIRK SPEARS AWARD
is presented annually to honor the distinguished and humane career of the late Professor Monroe K. Spears, sometime editor of the Sewanee Review and Libbie Shearn Moody Professor Emeritus at Rice University.

Because everything Professor Spears wrote is marked by clarity, economy, and felicity of expression and by elegant and discerning interpretation, the award recognizes the essays published in each volume of SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 that most nearly achieve these qualities and that have given the editors the greatest pleasure to read.

Volume 56 Award Recipients—Michael Ursell for his Winter 2016 essay, “Interinanimation and Lifelessness in John Donne’s Book Studies,” and Geoff Quilley for his Autumn 2016 essay, “Reenacting Cook’s Voyages in Nineteenth-CenturyVisual Culture”

The endowment to support this award has been generously provided by the Hobby Family Foundation.