Edward Wilson-Lee’s THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS recognised as the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize looks back on 25 years of historical non-fiction

Image: Orlando Myxx

Edward Wilson-Lee, who was awarded the 2019 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS, joined his fellow past prize winners in celebration as the Prize marked its 25th and final ceremony. The prize, funded by and in memory of the late Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman, recognised exceptional works of historical non-fiction, of such literary merit that reached beyond the academic market to connect with all readers.

Image: Orlando Myxx

The event on 16 July at Foyles Charing Cross included Edward and other previous winners Anita Anand, Kojo Koram, Keith Lowe, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Margaret Macmillan, David Olusoga, Richard Overy, David Reynolds, Avi Shlaim, Stephen A Smith, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Jenny Uglow, and Rebecca Wragg Sykes in conversation to consider the past, present, and future of historical non-fiction. The night culminated with Margaret Macmillan being crowned the ‘Winner of Winners’.

THE CATEGORY OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS, Edward’s 2019 winner, told the story of Christopher Columbus' illegitimate son Hernando, who sought to equal and surpass his father's achievements by creating a universal library to harness the vast powers of the new printing presses to assemble the world’s knowledge in one place. ‘THE CATEGORY OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS was a unanimous choice,’ said the 2019 judges Dr Kate Wiles and Stephanie Merritt. ‘We felt it stood out for its combination of compelling original research with elegant writing and a gripping narrative, bringing together histories of exploration, scholarship and personal and national identity. Through the life of Hernando Colón, Edward Wilson-Lee captures a turbulent world in the grip of unprecedented change, geographically and intellectually, and considers what lessons we might take for our own age of rapidly expanding information.’

THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS was published by William Collins in the UK in 2018 and by Scribner in the US in 2019. Rights have been sold in ten translation markets so far: Bulgaria (Colibri), China (Guangxi Normal University Press), France (Editions Paulsen), Italy (Bollati Boringhieri), Japan (Kashiwashobo), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Romania (ART), Portugal (Bertrand Editora), Saudi Arabia (Madarek) and Spain (Ariel, Planeta). THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS was also shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography in 2019.

About Edward Wilson-Lee

Edward Wilson-Lee is 1596 Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches Renaissance Literature. After growing up in the US, Kenya, and Switzerland, he studied in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge and lived in Zimbabwe, Mexico and the United States in between. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and two sons.

He has been awarded numerous Fellowships to support his work, including from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Foundation, and most recently a Guggenheim Fellowship. His first book was SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND and THE GRAMMAR OF ANGELS his most recent. In addition to English-language publications in the UK and the US, his work has been translated into another 15 languages and he is regularly invited to festivals abroad.

Praise for THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS

‘Perfectly pitched poetic drama – the closest thing documented history can get to magic realism…THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is a wonderful book, not least in the literal sense of an epic unfolding in a nonstop procession of marvels, ordeals and apparitions… A simile-studded prose that is seldom less than elegant and often quite beautiful… THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is most compelling as a meditation on the response to an explosive expansion of knowledge.’ – Simon Schama, Financial Times

'Wilson-Lee’s main subject… is an intellectual hunger at once dazzling and monstrous: Hernando Colon’s insatiable urge to know and to possess… For lovers of history, Wilson-Lee offers a thrill on almost every page… THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is an intellectual biography, but its beating heart is the tangled love of a son for his father... Edward Wilson-Lee’s magnificent book helps us understand [Hernando’s] obsessive desire to gather and preserve, even in the face of chaos.'  – Irina Dumitrescu, New York Times

'Superb biography... THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS affords an intriguing glimpse into the Renaissance mind and its rage for order, as well as a beguiling preview of the modern library and, very possibly, what lies beyond.' – Ernest Hilbert, Wall Street Journal

‘An elegantly written, absorbing portrait of a visionary man and his age.’ – Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)

'A gripping study of heroic endeavour and family rivalry; it's a tour de force of sifting through dusty fragments and of vivid biographical storytelling, as well as a delicious, Borgesian dream for all bookworms and lovers of libraries and print ephemera.' – Marina Warner, New Statesman

‘Edward Wilson-Lee’s THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is an utter joy, the story of the first internationally important library and the man whose vision it was. It will remind everyone who reads of it of how wonderful libraries and the people who work in them are.’ – Joseph O’Connor, Irish Times

Praise for Edward Wilson-Lee

‘Wilson-Lee combines literary flair with deep historical insight.’ – Paul Lay, The Times

‘Wilson-Lee has the rare knack of re-visiting even the most familiar places as if they were being discovered for the first time. His prose is rich, fluent, absorbing. He guides his readers through a kaleidoscope of detail, interrelating various themes with consummate skill.’ – Fernando Cervantes

‘Autodidact catnip. He’s a gifted chronicler of the odd, the interesting and the esoteric. Think non-fiction Umberto Eco.’ – Ian Sansom, The Spectator

Lyrical memoir by Costa Book of the Year winner Hannah Lowe won at auction by Scribner

Credit: Rii Schroer

Hannah Lowe’s THE WOMAN IN THE CHINESE COLLAR, winner of the 2023 Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award, has been acquired for publication in a heated five-way auction by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Deputy Publishing Director Kris Doyle acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) rights from Isobel Dixon. The book will be published in Spring 2026 as Scribner’s lead non-fiction title for the season.

The book is a lyrical, investigative memoir that investigates the fascinating life of Hannah’s Chinese–Jamaican aunt Nelsa, touching on themes of race, immigration and the spectre of male violence.

Hannah Lowe said: ‘I’m delighted THE WOMAN IN THE CHINESE COLLAR has found a home with Scribner in the UK. The book is the culmination of years of research and investigation into the life of my aunt Nelsa Lowe in Jamaica, and I’m so pleased it will be in the caring hands of Kris Doyle and his team.’

‘Everyone here was blown away by the story of Hannah’s “legendary” aunt Nelsa,’ added Kris Doyle. ‘This is a book about universal themes of family, inheritance and belonging – don’t we all want to know where we truly come from? – but the specific socio-political context also broadens the reach and resonance. Page by enthralling page, Hannah’s deft and thoughtful prose made the unknowable knowable: the past is not just there for the taking, but this gorgeous act of reclamation, recovery and reconstruction is a vital work of literature that grips from the first moment. The book is too original to be easily compared with others, but readers who have enjoyed recent non-fiction by Hisham Matar, Laura Cumming and Lea Ypi would find much pleasure here.’

Isobel Dixon said: ‘Hannah’s lyrical and narrative skills, so beautifully interwoven in her poetry, combine powerfully in this fierce, tender and searching memoir. It was no surprise that many publishers loved this magnificent, multi-faceted work, but we’re so happy that Hannah’s special book has found such a great UK home with Kris Doyle and the excellent team at Scribner.’

Propelled by a single portrait photograph, THE WOMAN IN THE CHINESE COLLAR is a lyrical, investigative family memoir that sees poet Hannah Lowe embark on a search across time and space to recover a lost story of a woman making her way in a man’s world. Combing through history and memory, Lowe traces the journey of her Afro–Chinese aunt Nelsa, a herbalist and healer, and renowned restaurant and nightclub hostess in Kingston, Jamaica.

Politics, poverty, disability, sex work and crime combine in this narrative of diaspora and home, as Lowe deftly and tenderly interrogates the role of writing and research in tracing routes and roots, and how to excavate the life of a marginalised woman when the archives are empty.

About Hannah Lowe

Hannah Lowe was born in Ilford to an English mother and Jamaican-Chinese father. Her 2021 poetry collection, THE KIDS, won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2021. THE KIDS also won the Costa Poetry Award 2021, was shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize, was a Poetry Book Society Choice for Autumn 2021 and an Irish Times and Guardian poetry book of the year.

Her first book-length collection, CHICK, won the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize and was selected for the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets 2014 promotion. Her second full-length collection, CHAN, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016, followed by a pamphlet, THE NEIGHBOURHOOD (Out-Spoken Press) in 2019. Her prose memoir, LONG TIME NO SEE, exploring her relationship with her half-Chinese, half-Jamaican immigrant father, was published by Periscope in 2014.

Praise for Hannah Lowe

‘We were enthralled by Hannah Lowe’s inventive approach to conjuring Nelsa, her Afro-Chinese Jamaican aunt. Remarkably, Lowe evokes Nelsa through a single portrait photo and along the way excavates other marginalised women whose lives are rarely noted in official archives.’ – Judges of the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award

‘It’s joyous, it’s warm and it’s completely universal. It’s crafted and skilful but also accessible… the sort of book that you could hand to anybody because you would know that everyone would get something out of it.’ – Reeta Chakrabarti, chair of Costa Prize judges, on THE KIDS

‘When you finish this poetically told book, you know you have been gifted a treasure’ – Kerry Young on LONG TIME, NO SEE

‘A poet with a commanding style; her voice is entirely her own, both rich and laconic… springing from the page with vitality, rue and insight.’ – Penelope Shuttle

‘MAGICAL, MESMERIZING’ THE CHILDREN’S HOME OUT NOW IN US

Charles Lambert’s ‘genre-defying dream of a novel’ THE CHILDREN’S HOME is published in North America today. Pre-empted by Nan Graham and John Glynn of Scribner, Lambert’s first US publication is an independent booksellers’ Indie Next Pick and has received praise from writers and reviewers alike.

Nuala O’Connor writes: 'Charles Lambert’s muted, beautiful prose leads the reader through THE CHILDREN'S HOME on a chain of burning questions: Who? When? How? Why? More delicate than Dickens and stranger than Snicket, this is a novel of odd, canny children; life-like wax figures; a wicked mother and her disfigured boy-man of a son. Sometimes heart-stopping, sometimes heart-warming, it is a provocative tale, ripe with intrigue and atmosphere. I loved every weird moment of it.’ Owen King describes it as ‘a not-nice sort of fairy tale, where the Prince has a face of tatters, where the children take grown-up revenge on their monsters. It's also, somehow, a searching, empathetic narrative about forgiveness’

Jenny Offill called it ‘a beautiful and uncanny novel by a writer who never ceases to surprise’ and Amelia Gray writes: ‘Dark and nuanced, eerie and quiet, THE CHILDREN’S HOME creeps behind the curtains of your imagination. This book stays with you.’

Pre-publication, both Kirkus and Booklist gave THE CHILDREN’S HOME Starred Reviews:

‘A thoroughly original entry into the tradition of ghost stories, eschewing convention. … Compulsively readable, a one-of-a-kind literary horror story.’ Kirkus

‘A magical, mesmerizing tale about the courage it takes to confront the unknown.’ – Booklist  

And the first wider reviews are equally glowing:

‘This disquieting novel is surely one of the year’s most bizarre stories… Mr. Lambert’s subtle prose enhances the novel’s creepiness, as does his refusal to fully resolve or explain its many mysteries.’ – The New York Times

 ‘THE CHILDREN’S HOME is a powerful construction of creeping dread which skilfully keeps the reader off-balance at every turn. … Much of the joy of THE CHILDREN’S HOME is the uncertainty at its heart, the uncanny nature of the experience which lingers long after the novel concludes. It’s a genre-defying dream of a novel, enigmas wrapped around deeper questions, rooted in the deepest mysteries of all: what is the truth within any of us? What connections do we have to those around us? What hold does the past keep fast on our hearts?’ – Robert Wiersema, The Toronto Star

 ‘THE CHILDREN’S HOME reads like a dream … a truly unique and memorable experience. If this novel signifies what my reading in 2016 will be like, then it is going to be a wonderful year indeed.’ – Christopher Shultz, LitReactor

A piece by Charles Lambert on stately homes and class, to mark the end of Downton Abbey in the US, also ran in the New York Times this week.

THE CHILDREN’S HOME will be launched in the UK by Aardvark Bureau on 2 March and French rights have been acquired by Éditions Anne Carrière.

Born in England, Charles Lambert lives in Fondi, near Rome, working as a university teacher and freelance editor. He is the author of several novels including LITTLE MONSTERS and ANY HUMAN FACE (Picador) and the autobiographical work WITH A ZERO AT ITS HEART (The Friday Project). He has won an O. Henry Award and other prizes for his short fiction.

Follow Charles on Twitter

Visit Charles' blog.

Charles Lambert’s THE CHILDREN’S HOME pre-empted by Scribner

Photo copyright: Patrizia Casamirra

Charles Lambert’s magnificent work of the literary uncanny, THE CHILDREN’S HOME, has been sold by Isobel Dixon in a pre-empt to Nan Graham and John Glynn at Scribner. Scribner has bought North American rights and will publish in late 2015.  

Morgan is a shockingly disfigured recluse who never leaves the country mansion he is heir to. His isolation is only punctuated by the presence of the housekeeper, Engel, and the weekly visits of the kindly Doctor Crane. But his solitary existence is disturbed when a young boy and girl arrive in the house, as if from nowhere. Drawn to the mysterious children, Morgan lets them stay, and with the help of Engel and Crane, begins to care for them – and others who soon follow them. As the cluster of strangely wise children explore the corridors and abandoned rooms of the house, they reveal to Morgan a cabinet of curiosities – and bitter secrets of his own life.

Charles Lambert’s latest work, WITH A ZERO AT ITS HEART, was published in the UK by The Friday Project in 2014, to wide acclaim. His short story ‘The Scent of Cinnamon’, published by ONE STORY,  was a recipient of The O. Henry Award in 2007.

Praise for Charles Lambert:

‘Charles Lambert writes as if his life depends on it. He takes risks at every turn.’ – Hannah Tinti

‘Charles Lambert is a seriously good writer.' – Beryl Bainbridge

Praise for WITH A ZERO AT ITS HEART

‘One of the finest books I’ve read this year. Its beauty lies in Lambert’s language – his skewering of a particular sentiment with a pithy phrase, his evocation of an experience in a few striking words.’ – A Life in Books ‘Best Books of 2014’

'A striking conceit... elegantly written and carries considerable emotional clout... poetic, tender and funny' –  Guardian

‘With 24 themed chapters and 10 numbered paragraphs, and each paragraph consisting of exactly 120 words, Lambert pieces together the sum of a life using gorgeous pen-portraits. An unusual and wonderful book to dip into.’ – Viv Groskop, Red Magazine