The George B. Sohier Prize, established by Bostonian businessman Waldo Higginson in 1890, is a $250 annual award for the best thesis of approximately 10,000 words or text submitted by a student of English or Modern Literature at Harvard University or Radcliffe College. Resident graduate students attending Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences are also eligible for the prize. Higginson's $6,500 grant, later increased to $7,000, was given with the stipulation that the prize money would be drawn from its annual interest and that any surplus would go toward Harvard University Library for the purchase of books. It was also understood that the annual prize would not be awarded if the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences deemed there were no suitable entries for that year. Waldo Higginson (1814–1894) graduated from Harvard in 1833 and had given the grant to honor his brother-in-law, George Brimmer Sohier (1832–1877), an 1852 Harvard graduate.
Early recipients
| Year
|
Prize Winner
|
Thesis
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| 1890
|
Curtis Hidden Page
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The Influence of Diderot on German Literature
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| 1891
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Raymond Calkins
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Criticism During the Classical Periods of German Literature.
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| 1892*
|
John Corbin
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The Elizabethan Hamlet
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| 1892*
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William Tenney Brewster
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The Rise and Influence of Reviews
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| 1893
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| 1894
|
William Vaughn Moody
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Sidney's Arcadia and Its Sources
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| 1895
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| 1896
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Carleton Eldredge Noyes
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Joseph and Thomas Warton and in their relationship to the English Romantic Movement
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| 1897
|
Beulah Marie Dix
|
Published Collections of English and Scottish Ballads, 1765–1802."
|
| 1898
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| 1899
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| 1900
|
Henry Latimer Seaver
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The Shepherd’s Calendar and Its Sources
|
| 1901
|
Charles M. Underwood
|
A Comparison between the Critical Methods of Sainte Beuve and Taine
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| 1902
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| 1903
|
Ernest Bernbaum
|
Elizabethan Domestic Dramas
|
| 1904
|
Frances Elizabeth Newell
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Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Sabrina Legend
|
| 1905
|
Walter Ralston Nelles
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The Dramatic Works of Henry Fielding
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| 1906
|
Homer Howells Harbour
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The Influence of Keats on English Poetry of the nineteenth Century
|
| 1907*
|
Hermann Hagedorn Jr.
|
The Plays of the English Comedians in Germany, and the Reasons underlying the Mutilation of the Elizabethan Originals
|
| 1908
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| 1909
|
Louise Anne Hannon
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Lord Chesterfield, A Study of the Survival in the 18th century of the Aristocratic Ideal\
|
| 1910
|
Norman Otto Foerster
|
Henry David Thoreau: Poet
|
| 1911
|
Benjamin Harrison Lehman
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| 1912
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| 1913
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| 1914*
|
Delight Walkly Hall
|
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| 1914*
|
Elizabeth Jackson
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| 1915
|
Harold Gersham Files,
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| 1916
|
Helen Constance White
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| 1917*
|
Harold Shepherd Bennett
|
Comparison of the Lyric Poetry of Mörike and Heine with Reference to the Principles of Lessing’s Laocoön”
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| 1917*
|
Waldo Cutler Peeble
|
Swedenborg's Influence on Goethe”
|
| 1918
|
Martin Luther Hope,
|
Thomas Hardy”
|
| 1919
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| 1920
|
Stephen Albert Freeman
|
A Comparative Study of Aeschylus and Corneille
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* Prize Shared By Dual Winners
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