[1][2][3] 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 group of women and men working in the industry – authors, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, journalists – therefore met to discuss the issue.
The winner of the prize receives £30,000, along with a bronze sculpture called the Bessie created by artist Grizel Niven.
[10] There was no corporate sponsor for 2013; sponsorship was by "private benefactors", led by Cherie Blair and writers Joanna Trollope and Elizabeth Buchan.
[11] Beginning in 2014, the prize was sponsored by the liquor brand Baileys Irish Cream, owned by the drinks conglomerate Diageo.
[21] Nineteen "inspirational women" were chosen to launch the campaign and then thousands of people from the "general public" submitted their ideas via Twitter.
Among the criticisms were a number of factual errors: Reclaim Her Name published the biographical The Life of Martin R. Delany, in this edition attributed to Frances Rollin Whipper in place of Frank A. Rollin, with a cover image depicting the abolitionist Frederick Douglass instead of Martin Delany.
[29] Catherine Taylor of The Times Literary Supplement similarly cautioned that a "one-size-fits-all approach overlooks the complexities of publishing history, in which pseudonyms aren't always about conforming to patriarchal or other obvious standard", noting that Vernon Lee entirely abandoned the legal name Violet Paget both on the page and off it, while George Sand incorporated it into her public presentation, as part of which she also wore menswear, smoked and engaged in behaviours which queered gender boundaries of the time.
[...] This playing with gender presentation alongside a choice of male pseudonyms suggests that there is more going on here than the Women's Prize campaign allows space for there to be".
[37][38] On the other hand, in 2011 London journalist Jean Hannah Edelstein wrote about her own "wrong reasons" for supporting the prize: Unfortunately, the evidence shows that the experiences of male and female writers after they set their pens down are often distinctively different.
[39]In 2012 Cynthia Ozick, writing in The New York Times, said the Prize "was not born into an innocent republic of letters" when it comes to a history of women writers being discriminated against.
"[40] In 1999 Lola Young, chair of the judges' panel, claimed that British female literature fell into two categories, either "insular and parochial" or "domestic in a piddling kind of way".
The Women's Prize later asked for Emezi's "sex as defined by law" when submitting The Death of Vivek Oji for inclusion.