Littleton-Griswold Prize
In 1961, the Littleton-Griswold Fund Committee created the Littleton-Griswold Prize for studies in the legal history of the American colonies and of the United States prior to 1900. The prize was not awarded, however, until 1966, and was abolished the following year. In 1985, Council revived the prize as an annual award for the best book in any subject on the history of American law and society, broadly defined.
The general rules for submission are:
- Only books of high scholarly and literary merit will be considered.
- Books with a copyright of 2015 will be eligible for consideration for the 2016 award.
- Nominators must complete an online prize submission form for each book submitted.
- One copy of each entry must be sent to each committee member and clearly labeled “Littleton-Griswold Prize Entry.” Electronic copies may be sent only to committee members who have indicated they will accept them.
Please Note: Entries must be received by May 15, 2016, to be eligible for the 2016 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2016 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2017 AHA annual meeting in Denver.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
The deadline for this year’s submissions has passed. Review committee contact information and the prize submission form for the next prize year will be posted by March 31.
2015 Littleton-Griswold Prize
Cornelia H. Dayton, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
Sharon V. Salinger, Univ. of California, Irvine
Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press)
In Robert Love’s Warnings, Cornelia Dayton and Sharon Salinger painstakingly trace the practice of warning out—notifying strangers that the town would not support them if they became indigent—in colonial Boston. The book challenges the longstanding claim that warnings served as forms of exclusion, arguing instead that the system actually encouraged the circulation of people. Gracefully written and based in previously unexplored sources, the authors imaginatively capture the texture of everyday life and its relationship to law and governance.