The International Spenser Society presents the Isabel MacCaffrey Award each year for the best article or book on Spenser published in the preceding two years (with book and article competitions alternating). The judges do their best to find and read all Spenserian articles, monographs, anthologies, and editions listed in the MLA and WorldCat databases--with the exception of works written by previous MacCaffrey recipients--but anyone wishing to make sure that his or her publication is not overlooked is urged to contact the Vice President of the Society, preferably by December of the year in which the work is published. Authors of books can expedite the process by arranging for three copies of each book to be mailed to the three members of that year's MacCaffrey Committee, but N.B.: if all three copies arrive at one address, the Society will not have the funds to pay for forwarding to the other two judges. Authors are advised to request the correct three addresses from the current Vice President, who chairs both MacCaffrey committees.
The Isabel MacCaffrey Award was established at the Spenser Society’s annual meeting in 1984 to recognize the year’s best essay in Spenser studies. The first award was given in 1985. Until 2003, preference in the selection was given to junior scholars. In 2003, the prize was restructured to recognize books and essays in separate (usually alternating) competitions, and to give equal consideration to junior and senior scholars.
1985
Russell J. Meyer, “‘Fixt in heauens hight’: Spenser, Astronomy, and the Date of the Cantos of Mutabilitie,” Spenser Studies 4 (1983): 115-29.
1986
Jacqueline T. Miller, “The Status of Fairyland: Spenser’s ‘Vniust Possession,” Spenser Studies 5 (1985): 31-44.
1987
Gordon Teskey, “From Allegory to Dialectic: Imagining Error in Spenser and Milton,” PMLA 101 (1986): 9-23.
1988
Susanne Lindgren Wofford, “Britomart’s Petrarchan Lament: Allegory and Narrative in The Faerie Queene III.iv,” Comparative Literature 39 (1987): 28-57.
Honorable mention: Lauren Silberman, “The Hermaphrodite and the Metamorphosis of Spenserian Allegory,” English Literary Renaissance 17 (1987): 207-23.
1989
Jane Tylus, “Spenser, Virgil, and the Politics of Poetic Labor,” English Literary History 55 (1988): 53-77.
1990
Anne Fogarty, “The Colonization of Language: Narrative Strategies in A View of the Present State of Ireland and The Faerie Queene, Book VI,” in Spenser and Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, ed. Patricia Coughlan (Cork University Press, 1989), pp. 75-108.
1991
Kenneth Borris, “‘Diuelish Ceremonies’: Allegorical Satire of Protestant Extremism in The Faerie Queene VI.viii.31-51,” Spenser Studies 8 (1990): 175-210.
1992
Co-winners: Linda Gregerson, “Protestant Erotics: Idolatry and Interpretation in Spenser’s Faerie Queene,” ELH 58 (1991): 1-34;
and Dorothy Stephens, “Into Other Arms: Amoret’s Evasion,” ELH 58 (1991): 523-44.
1993
Richard Rambuss, “The Secretary’s Study: The Secret Design of The Shepheardes Calendar,” ELH 59 (1992): 313-35.
1994
Mary Villeponteaux, “Semper Eadem: Belphoebe's Denial of Desire,” in Renaissance Discourses of Desire, ed. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (University of Missouri Press, 1993), pp. 29-45.
1995
Craig Berry, “Borrowed Armor/Free Grace: The Quest for Authority in The Faerie Queene I and Chaucer’s The Tale of Sir Thopas,” Studies in Philology 91 (1994): 136-66.
1996
Elizabeth Mazzola, “Apocryphal Texts and Epic Amnesia: The Ends of History in The Faerie Queene,” Soundings 78 (Spring 1995): 131-41.
1997
Elizabeth Fowler, “The Failure of Moral Philosophy in the Work of Edmund Spenser,” Representations 51 (Summer 1995): 47-76.
1998
J. Christopher Warner, “Poetry and Praise in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,” Studies in Philology 94 (1997): 368-81.
1999
Paul Suttie, “Spenser’s Political Pragmatism,” Studies in Philology 95 (1998): 56-76.
2000
Jeff Dolven, “Spenser and the Troubled Theaters,” English Literary Renaissance 29 (1999): 179-200.
2001
Tobias Gregory, “Shadowing Intervention: On the Politics of The Faerie Queene Book 5, Cantos 10-12,” ELH 67 (2000): 365-97.
2002
James Fleming, “A View from the Bridge: Ireland and Violence in Spenser's Amoretti.” Spenser Studies 15 (2001): 135-64.
2003
Not awarded.
2004
Co-winners: Harry Berger, Jr., “Archimago: Between Text and Countertext,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1800 43 (Winter 2003): 19-64;
and Jennifer Summit, “Monuments and Ruins: Spenser and the Problem of the English Library,” ELH 70 (2003): 1-34.
2005
A. C. Hamilton, ed., The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser (Longman/Pearson Publishing, 2001).
Honorable mentions: Elizabeth Fowler, Literary Character: The Human Figure in Early English Writing (Cornell University Press, 2003);
and Richard McCabe, Spenser’s Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference (Oxford University Press, 2002).
2006
Joseph Campana, “On Not Defending Poetry: Spenser, Suffering, and the Energy of Affect,” PMLA 120 (2005): 33-48.
2007
Not awarded.
2008
Jeff Dolven, Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance (University of Chicago Press, 2007); prize for best book published in 2005, 2006, or 2007;
and David Landreth, “At Home with Mammon: Matter, Money, and Memory in Book II of The Faerie Queene,” ELH 73 (Spring 2006): 245-274.
2009
Judith H. Anderson, Reading the Allegorical Intertext: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton (Fordham University Press, 2008)
