Last year, the Estelle Prize for English was awarded jointly to two superlative entries, chosen from a field of more than 40 submissions from students hailing from both maintained and fee-paying schools. As in previous years, the judging panel were struck by the impressive quality of the essays focussing on a wide range of different kinds of texts.
The set questions for the prize focused on the literary representation of the passage of time; the social and literary qualities of a writer's diction; and – drawing on a poem by environmental activist and poet Wendell Berry – eco-criticism. Given the strength of the field, the judges resolved to split the prize between two entires:
1. Matilda (St Paul's School, Hammersmith, London)
Essay title: 'bell hooks on female liberation from oppressive mind-body dualism: intimacy and language in women's literature'"
This was a clever, complex, philosophically thoughtful account of intimacy, the body, and language in the writings of Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood. Articulate and perceptive, it easily pushed itself clear of the bulk of the field in the quality of its close readings, its use of precise critical language, its facility with quotation, and its thorough knowledge of both Woolf and Atwood."
2. Mia (Latymer School, London)
Essay title: Talking Proper: Language, Liberation and Oppression
This excellent essay on Alice Walker's The Color Purple stayed scrupulously close to the terms of the bell hooks quotation offered in the question, unusual for essays on this question across the competition. The essay exposed the way in which Walker uses the epistolary form to make sense of the difference between Celie's and Nettie's language, the importance of the social and cultural ideas with which that language is aligned, and the friction between vernacular speech and the dominant discourses of Christianity and the patriarchy. Direct, critically productive, and clearly written, the essay culminated in a sparkling, confident contextualisation of the novel in 1980s black American urban culture."
Both winners came to Cambridge for the College Open Days last July, to receive their awards and our congratulations. In addition to the work the prize is doing in school communities now across the country – the evidence for which we collect every year, and find increasingly interesting and compelling – it is making an important impact on our admissions and undergraduate cohorts. We now routinely interview students who have entered essays for the prize, especially those who have been commended or have won, and to date have made three offers to former Estellers (Lottie McCrindell, a former winner, is currently in the second year; students from more recent rounds we expect to see in October this year).
The Queens' English Fellows are enormously grateful to The Estelle Trust, through Nigel Farrow (1958), for its ongoing support of the prize.
Information on how to enter an essay for the 2020 round, as well as the set questions, will be published on the College website in due course.
With thanks to Dr Andrew Zurcher, Bruce Cleave Fellow in English and Drama.