Which 1936 book earned C.S. Lewis the Hawthornden Prize?

The Allegory of Love earned C.S. Lewis the Hawthornden Prize in 1936.

Published in 1936, The Allegory of Love is a scholarly study of medieval and Renaissance ideas about courtly and allegorical love. Lewis examines works and traditions associated with writers including Ovid, Chrétien de Troyes, Dante, and Edmund Spenser. The book is especially known for tracing how literary conventions about love developed across centuries.

The Hawthornden Prize was awarded to Lewis for the work in 1937. The prize recognized a book of imaginative literature, and its award to a major piece of literary criticism reflected the book’s unusual combination of scholarship, historical range, and vivid prose.

The title is sometimes confused with A Preface to Paradise Lost, another important Lewis study published in 1942. The two books address different literary subjects: The Allegory of Love surveys traditions of love and allegory, while the later work defends and explains John Milton’s epic. The 1936 book was Lewis’s first major academic success.