The Katharine Briggs Award 2025 - winner announced

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the Katharine Briggs 2025 is

Ann Schmiesing, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography (Yale University Press)

Our prize judges praised the winning title as:

A work that "...brilliantly illuminates the surrounding social and cultural contexts which shaped the Grimms and their work. A work with tremendous contemporary resonance given that the questions the Grimms raised around the nature of ‘folklore’ itself are ones we are still grappling with in the 21st century. Excellently researched and written in a clear and readable style this is an impeccable study for specialist and non-specialist alike".

Congratulations to Prof  Schmiesing and to Yale University Press!

The were two join runners up:

Cormac K.H. O'Malley and Patrick J. Mahoney,  The Enchanted Bay: Tales and Legends from Ernie O'Malley's Irish Folklore Collection (Merrion Press)

and

James Wright, Historic Building Mythbusting: Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology (The History Press)

Full details on the Katharine Briggs shortlist was given in a previous blogpost.

The Katharine Briggs Award is an annual book prize established by the Folklore Society to encourage the study of folklore, to help improve the standard of folklore publications in Britain and Ireland, to establish The Folklore Society as an arbiter of excellence, and to commemorate the life and work of the distinguished scholar Katharine Mary Briggs (1898-1980; Society president 1969-1972).

We wish to congratulate all the authors and publishers who supported The Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Award by entering their books into the competition.

Published 12th November 2025