MLA Prize for a Scholarly Edition
Competition in 2025 for Editions Published in 2023 or 2024
Open to Members and Nonmembers of the Association
The Committee on Honors and Awards of the Modern Language Association invites editors, including editors of digital works, to compete for the sixteenth MLA Prize for a Scholarly Edition. Established in 1995, the award is presented each odd-numbered year. For the competition in 2025, the committee solicits submissions of editions published in 2023 or 2024. A multivolume edition is eligible if at least one volume was published during that period. The prize will be given without regard to the field or language either of the editor or of the text presented in the edition. The editor need not be a member of the MLA.
To qualify for the award, an edition should be based on an examination of all available relevant textual sources; the source texts and the edited text's deviations from them should be fully described; the edition should employ editorial principles appropriate to the materials edited, and those principles should be clearly articulated in the volume; the text should be accompanied by appropriate textual and other historical contextual information; the edition should exhibit the highest standards of accuracy in the presentation of its text and apparatus; and the text and apparatus should be presented as accessibly and elegantly as possible. The prize, which consists of a cash award and a certificate, will be presented to the winning editor at the association's annual convention in January 2026.
Editors or publishers who wish to submit a work are asked to fill out a submission form.
- If you are an editor submitting a work, please use this form.
- If you are a publisher submitting a work, please use this form.
Publishers may enter more than one title. Nominations of a volume from a multivolume edition that has won the award will be accepted only if the principal editor of the current volume was not the principal editor of the volumes that won the award in the past. Substantially revised or updated digital editions may compete once every four years. An ongoing electronic work that has won the award may not compete again. Entries may be sent at any time but must be received by 1 May 2025. The winning editor will be contacted in September, and a public announcement will be made in early December. Because of the volume of submissions, we regret that we are unable to contact each entrant individually.
For further information, write the coordinator of book prizes (awards@mla.org).
Past winners of this prize