Studies in Philology

The Editorial Board of Studies in Philology voted at its annual meeting in May 2008 to establish an annual prize of $1000 for the best article published in the journal during the previous year. The prize was named in honor of Louis Round Wilson, whose monograph Chaucer's Relative Constructions appeared as the first issue of Studies in Philology in 1906. Wilson was instrumental in founding and establishing SP, and in helping to ensure that it would have a long and vital future.

The award-winning article for 2021 is Regina Janes's "Lemuel Gulliver, Map-Maker." Published in the fourth number of vol. 118, Janes's study makes the case that Jonathan Swift himself designed the maps and diagrams for Gulliver's Travels. Having shown that we can securely consider these images as part of Swift's canon, Janes unfolds why their authorship matters for an understanding of the work's purpose. The bewildering errors in the maps prove both playful and serious means by which Swift exposes human "desires, dreams, and fantasies in forms that seem almost attainable." We are honored to have published Professor Janes's game-changing, meticulously detailed, and powerful study.

[End Page i]