Harkness wins Tony Lothian Prize for proposal on Macmillan

Sarah Harkness has won the Tony Lothian Prize for her "sympathetic" biography proposal "Alexander Macmillan, Advocate for the Ignorant – The Life and Times of a Victorian Publisher".

The annual prize, administered by the Biographer's Club, awards £2,000 to the writer of the best proposal for a first uncommissioned biography. 

Harkness' proposal explores the origins of Macmillan. It's synopsis reads: "2018 marked the 175th anniversary of the House of Macmillan, a major international publishing business founded by a man born in poverty in Ayrshire with only a rudimentary education. How did Alexander Macmillan build so much from such slim advantages? His career illustrates perfectly the pillars of the Victorian character: business acumen matched by fierce ambition, intellectual enquiry informing social philanthropy, mingled with strong devotion to family life.

"He counted the greatest intellects of the age among his friends and authors, Tennyson, Carlisle, Gladstone, Arnold and Hardy among them. Sarah Harkness evokes a warm-hearted, amusing yet driven man whose influence was immense, promoting women authors, popularising the classics and spreading radical ideas across the middle classes and into mass culture."

The judges, Lindsay Duguid, Dan Franklin and Catharine Morris, commented: "Alexander Macmillan was the father of a dynasty, the founder of a successful publishing firm and a friend to literary giants. Sarah Harkness' sympathetic account of his humble origins and later successes skilfully captures familiar names from an unfamiliar angle."