Booker Prize Archive

The Library became the permanent home of the Booker Prize Archive in 2003.

The Booker Prize for Fiction is an annual prize open to any novel originally written in English and published in the UK, regardless of the nationality of the author. The Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969, when authors had to be from the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. It became the Man Booker Prize in 2002. The Man Group generously sponsored the prize for 18 successful years. In June 2019 the prize had a new sponsor, Crankstart, the charitable foundation of Sir Michael Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman. Both are keen readers of fiction and are fully committed to the work of the Booker Prize Foundation and to the prizes. The prize went back to being called The Booker Prize at the same time. Past winners include V S Naipaul, Iris Murdoch, William Golding, Salman Rushdie, Peter Carey, Arundhati Roy, Ian McEwan, John Banville and Hilary Mantel. Further information about the prize can be found on the website for The Booker Prizes.

The Archive, which encompasses the administrative history of the prize from 1968 to date, collects together a diverse range of material, including correspondence, publicity material, copies of both the Longlists and the Shortlists, minutes of meetings, photographs and material relating to the awards dinner (letters of invitation, guest lists, seating plans). Embargoes of ten or twenty years apply to certain categories of material, examples include all material relating to the judging process and the Longlist prior to 2002.

Online Archive Catalogue records exist for material from 1968-present. The Archive is available for consultation.

The Man Booker Prize celebrated it's 50th anniversary in 2018. As part of the celebrations we digitised 50 items from the Archive, which helped to tell the story of the prize.
Items from the Archive were included in the exhibition 'The Booker 40 at the V&A' which ran from 6 September 2008 to 17 May 2009 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize.

Booker Prize archive display celebrating 40 years of the Booker PrizeExhibition on Women and the Booker Prize
From 16 June until 11 July 2014 the exhibition Women and the Booker Prize was held in the Glass Tank at Oxford Brookes. The exhibition celebrated key women such as authors Dame Hilary Mantel and Beryl Bainbridge, administrator Marilyn Edwards and judge Dame Rebecca West.

Complementary material held by the Library includes manuscripts donated by the family of inaugural Prize Winner P.H. Newby and the First Chapter Series (Booker Prize) donated by Oak Tree Fine Press.