Comments made during the award presentation follow the name of each recipient.

The Homer D. Babbidge Award was presented to Walter W. Woodward, Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606-1676 (UNC Press).

“Prof. Woodward treats an individual—John Winthrop, Jr.—who was so evidently integral to the successful settlement and prospering of Connecticut in the seventeenth century that the reader is left stunned that we have had to wait this long for this comprehensive, incisive, and necessary biography. A gifted researcher and prosist, Prof. Woodward textures his archives and diction into a richly layered and lively narrative so fresh that you not only feel you are discovering John Winthrop, Jr. for the first time, but that you are re-discovering early New England. Prospero’s America is an unusually outstanding contribution to our understanding of seventeenth-century New England culture.”

 

The Betty M. Linsley Award was presented to the Connecticut Historical Society for Connecticut Needlework: Women, Art, and Family, 1740-1840, edited and annotated with great skill by Susan P. Schoelwer.

“Within the household and the family, Connecticut’s women of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century particularly shaped the course of the colony and the state. While some women left journals, far more placed their impress on the more ordinary crafts, utensils, and objects of the household.  Outside of the kitchen and the barn, women especially cultivated the spinning wheel, the loom, and the needle.  Nothing more brilliantly illuminates this realm than the extraordinary artistry of the embroidered textile panels and tableaus they produced and which Connecticut Needlework has so elegantly reproduced and explicated.”