Literary Review

Last updated
Literary Review
Literary Review.png
Literary Review December 2018 cover.png
EditorNancy Sladek
Frequency11 per year
Circulation 44,750 (as of 2006[?]) [1] [ self-published source ]
Founded1979;44 years ago (1979)
CountryUnited Kingdom
Based inLondon
LanguageEnglish
Website literaryreview.co.uk
ISSN 0144-4360

Literary Review is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. [1] The magazine was edited for fourteen years by veteran journalist Auberon Waugh. The current editor is Nancy Sladek.

Contents

The magazine reviews a wide range of published books, including fiction, history, politics, biography and travel, and additionally prints new fiction. It is also known for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award that it has run since 1993.

Bad Sex in Fiction Award

Each year since 1993, Literary Review has presented the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award to the author it deems to have produced the worst description of a sex scene in a novel. The award is symbolically presented in the form of what has been described as a "semi-abstract trophy representing sex in the 1950s", [2] depicting a naked woman draped over an open book. The award was established by Rhoda Koenig, a literary critic, and Auberon Waugh, then the magazine's editor.

The aim of the award is "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it". [2] The enduring relevance of this rationale has been questioned, based on concerns about censorious public shaming (including online) of authors of serious literary fiction. [3]

Winners

Contributors

Contributors to the magazine have included Diana Athill, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Beryl Bainbridge, John Banville, Julian Barnes, Maile Chapman, Boris Dralyuk, Hilary Mantel, John Mortimer, Malcolm Bradbury, A. S. Byatt, Paul Johnson, David Starkey, John Gray, Robert Harris, Nick Hornby, Richard Ingrams, Joseph O'Neill, Lynn Barber, Derek Mahon, Oleg Gordievsky, John Sutherland and D. J. Taylor. Recently[ when? ] published authors of new fiction include William Trevor, Claire Keegan and Nicola Barker.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Huston</span> French-Canadian author

Nancy Louise Huston, OC is a Canadian-born novelist and essayist who writes primarily in French and translates her own works into English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evelyn Waugh</span> British writer and journalist (1903–1966)

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">T. C. Boyle</span> American novelist and short-story writer

Thomas Coraghessan Boyle is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published nineteen novels and more than 150 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (BLFC) is a tongue-in-cheek contest, held annually and sponsored by the English Department of San José State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" – that is, one which is deliberately bad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baillie Gifford Prize</span> Non-fiction writing award

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize, is an annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award. With its motto "All the best stories are true", the prize covers current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. The competition is open to authors of any nationality whose work is published in the UK in English. The longlist, shortlist and winner is chosen by a panel of independent judges, which changes every year. Formerly named after English author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, the award was renamed in 2015 after Baillie Gifford, an investment management firm and the primary sponsor. Since 2016, the annual dinner and awards ceremony has been sponsored by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auberon Waugh</span> English journalist and novelist (1939–2001)

Auberon Alexander Waugh was an English journalist and novelist, and eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was widely known by his nickname "Bron".

Craig Edward Moncrieff Brown is an English critic and satirist, best known for parliamentary sketch writing, humorous articles and parodies for newspapers and magazines including The Times, the Daily Mail and Private Eye.

The Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award is a Canadian literary award administered by the Atlantic Book Awards & Festival for the best work of adult fiction published in the previous year by a writer from the Atlantic provinces. The prize honours Thomas Head Raddall and is supported by an endowment he willed to it. The award is currently worth $25,000.

<i>Cherwell</i> (newspaper) Oxford University student newspaper

Cherwell is a weekly student newspaper published entirely by students of Oxford University. Founded in 1920 and named after a local river, Cherwell is a subsidiary of independent student publishing house Oxford Student Publications Ltd. Receiving no university funding, the newspaper is one of the oldest student publications in the UK.

Erotic Review is a monthly UK-based lifestyle publication. Covering eroticism and sex-related topics, it was first published in 1995 as a print magazine, migrating to an eZine format in June 2010. In addition to the monthly magazine, available to paying subscribers as a virtual flipbook, the magazine's website featured blogs and reviews available free of charge. Mid-2011 it was decided to change the format once again, dispense with the flipbook and subscriptions and make all current columns, articles and reviews free of charge and so accessible to all.

Alexander Evelyn Michael Waugh is an English writer, critic, and journalist. Among other books, he has written Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family (2004), about five generations of his own family, and The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War (2008) about the Wittgenstein family. He is an advocate of the Oxfordian theory, which holds that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was the real author of the works of William Shakespeare.

David Nolan is a British television producer and author, specialising in music and popular culture biographies, covering subjects from the Sex Pistols to Simon Cowell. He is a former lecturer at Salford University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's Prize for Fiction</span> Annual prize for female author novel in English

The Women's Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes. It is awarded annually to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year. A sister prize, the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, was launched in 2023.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Val Hennessy</span> British journalist

Val Hennessy is a British journalist who writes for the Daily Mail.

Winkler is a 2006 novel by English food critic Giles Coren. It is a 'comic account of one man's search for meaning, identity, and a suitable response to the burden of history'.

<i>The Age of Magic</i> 2014 novel by Ben Okri

The Age of Magic is a 2014 novel by Nigerian writer Ben Okri. It won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award in 2014.

References

  1. 1 2 "Literary Review media kit (PDF)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 October 2008.
  2. 1 2 3 "Third time 'lucky' for bad sex winner". BBC News. 3 December 2005. Retrieved 27 November 2007.
  3. ↑ Gough, Julian (28 November 2019). "I was nominated for the Bad sex award. Don't laugh". The Guardian . It is possible that the Bad sex award had a point when it was established back in 1993. After the collapse of Britain's obscenity laws, and before the internet, authors were occasionally encouraged to add some gratuitous sex in order to sell books, giving us the bonkbuster. But that era is long gone... I find the Bad sex award, at this point in its history, in bad faith. Its basic premise – that authors are adding unnecessary and lazy sex to increase sales – is not just wrong, it's the reverse of the truth. The award very deliberately avoids shortlisting actual pornography or erotica and instead targets authors who are trying to be honest about desire and sex, however distasteful the results may be. It deliberately and successfully encourages the worst, and dumbest, misreading of fiction; the conflating of authors with their characters in order to publicly shame them.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Rhind-Tutt, Louise (27 November 2017). "Celebrating 25 years of the worst sex scenes in literary history". i.
  5. ↑ "Sean Thomas wins the Bad Sex in Fiction Award". PR Newswire (Press release). Retrieved 27 November 2007.
  6. ↑ "Bad sex book prize for journalist". BBC News. 1 December 2005. Retrieved 27 November 2007.
  7. ↑ "First-time author wins Bad Sex in Fiction honor". Associated Press. 29 November 2006. Retrieved 27 November 2007.
  8. ↑ "Late Mailer wins 'bad sex' award". BBC News. 27 November 2007. Retrieved 27 November 2007.
  9. ↑ Flood, Alison (25 November 2008). "Rachel Johnson 'honoured' to win Bad Sex award". The Guardian.
  10. ↑ "Author Somerville wins 'bad sex' literary prize". BBC News. 30 November 2010. Retrieved 30 November 2010.
  11. ↑ "Jonathan Beckman - Bad Sex Report 2011". Literary Review. December 2011.
  12. ↑ Maev Kennedy (4 December 2012). "Bad sex award goes to Nancy Huston's 'babies and bedazzlements'". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 December 2012.
  13. ↑ "Jonathan Beckman - Twitching Fairy Penguin". Literary Review. December 2014.
  14. ↑ "Morrissey wins Bad Sex in Fiction prize". BBC News. 1 December 2015. Retrieved 2 December 2015.
  15. ↑ "Literary Review - For People Who Devour Books". Literary Review. 17 August 2023.
  16. ↑ Chandler, Mark (8 December 2020). "Bad Sex award cancelled to spare people from more bad things". The Bookseller . Retrieved 8 December 2020.
  17. ↑ Croft, Ethan (9 December 2022). "Bad Sex Award cancelled, but John Le Carré's still a winner". Evening Standard. Retrieved 12 July 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.