Gaisford Prize

The Gaisford Prize is a prize in the University of Oxford, founded in 1855 in memory of Dr Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855). For most of its history, the prize was awarded for Classical Greek Verse and Prose. The prizes are now the Gaisford Essay Prize and the Gaisford Dissertation Prize.

History
Dr Thomas Gaisford, Dean of Christ Church, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford for more than forty years (1811–1855), died on 2 June 1855. Ten days later, at a meeting held in Christ Church on 12 June, it was resolved to establish a prize in his honour, to be called the Gaisford Prize, and to raise for that purpose £1,000 by public subscription, the interest to be applied "to reward a successful prizeman or prizemen, under such regulations as shall be approved by Convocation".

The Prize was first awarded in 1857.

When Oscar Wilde won the Newdigate Prize in 1878, his prize poem, Ravenna, was published by Thomas Shrimpton and Son of Oxford with two lists of names on the wrapper, one of the winners of the Newdigate Prize from 1840 to 1877, the other of the winners of the Gaisford Prize for Greek Prose from 1857 to 1876.

There were originally two Gaisford Prizes, for Greek Verse and for Greek Prose. To these were added two more, for an Essay and for a Dissertation. However, under 'Part 21: Gaisford Fund', the current Schedule to the University's Statutes and Regulations provides for only two prizes: (1) a Gaisford Essay Prize for Greek Language and Literature (for which only undergraduates shall be eligible); (2) a Gaisford Dissertation Prize for Greek or Latin Language and Literature (for which only graduates shall be eligible).

Winners of the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse

 * 1857: J. H. Warner, Balliol, for Greek hexameters, from Milton, Paradise Lost, VI, 56
 * 1858: R. Broughton, Balliol, for Greek iambics, from Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I, Act II, scene 4
 * 1859: George R. Luke, Balliol, for Greek verse, from the Morte D'Arthur
 * 1860: Chaloner W. Chute, for Greek iambics, from Shakespeare, King Richard III, Act IV, scene 4
 * 1861: James Bryce, Trinity, for The May Queen: a Greek idyll
 * 1862: Robert W. Raper, Trinity, for Greek iambics, from Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II, Act IV, scene 3
 * 1863: Charles J. Pearson, for Homeric hexameters, from Milton's Paradise Lost
 * 1864: Evelyn Abbott, Balliol, for Greek tragic iambics, etc., from Shakespeare, Pericles, Act V, Scene 1
 * 1865: Ernest Myers, Balliol
 * 1866: George Nutt, New College, for Greek comic iambics, from Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II, Act I, Scene 2
 * 1867: Alexander M. Bell, Balliol, for Dante poeta apud Inferos
 * 1868: Richard Lewis Nettleship, Balliol, for City of Pygmies
 * 1869: John Arthur Godley, Balliol, for Greek Theocritean verse, from Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act 4, scene 2
 * 1871: Edward Byron Nicholson, Trinity, for Greek verse Hymnos eis Asteras
 * 1876: Arthur Elam Haigh, verse from William Shakespeare
 * 1877: Sidney Graves Hamilton, verse from John Milton
 * 1882: William Ross Hardie, Balliol, for Greek comic iambics, translation from Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act II, scene 5
 * 1883: Cecil Henry St Leger Russell, Trinity
 * 1884: Harry Hammond House, Corpus Christi, for Greek iambics, translation from Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part 2, Act 1, sc. 1
 * 1889: René Louis Alphonse Du Pontet, Trinity, for Greek hexameters
 * 1890: William Martin Geldart, Balliol, for Greek comic iambics, from Shakespeare, Henry V, Act II, Scene III
 * 1894: George Stuart Robertson, for Shakespeare's King Henry IV, part II, act 2, scene II, lines 1–100, translated into comic iambic verse
 * 1896: Edward L. D. Cole, for Greek hexameters
 * 1898: James Alexander Webster, for translation from Christopher Marlowe's Edward II, Act V, scene 1.
 * 1902: Edward William Macleay Grigg, New College, for translation from Shakespeare, Richard III, act 1, scene 2
 * 1906: Leslie Whitaker Hunter, for Greek elegiac verse, translation from Tennyson's Lotos-eaters
 * 1916: Godfrey Rolles Driver, New College
 * 1927: Ronald Syme, Oriel, for a passage of Morris's The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs into Homeric hexameters
 * 1928: Denys Lionel Page, for Greek tragic iambics, translation of John Masefield's Pompey the Great, Act 2, Scene 1
 * 1930: Brian Davidson, translation of Addison's Cato, Act IV, scene 4, to Act V, scene 1
 * 1934: Spencer Barrett, Christ Church.
 * 1936: John Godfrey Griffith, for translation of Tolstoy's 'Thou shalt not kill'
 * 1995: No prize awarded (but honourably mentioned: Martin Revermann, Corpus Christi)
 * 1996: Jeremy Grant, Worcester
 * 1998: No prize awarded (but honourably mentioned: Letizia Palladini, Balliol)
 * 1999: Luke Pitcher
 * 2000: Laura Bender, Magdalen

Winners of the Gaisford Prize for Greek Prose

 * 1858: George R. Luke, Balliol, for Nikais : a Greek dialogue on superstition
 * 1861: Charles Bigg, Corpus Christi
 * 1870: John Arthur Godley, Balliol, for Phidias, or Concerning Sculpture: a Platonic dialogue
 * 1871: George Edward Jeans, for Iceland : in Herodotean prose
 * 1880: William Yorke Fausset, Balliol
 * 1884: Cecil Henry St Leger Russell, Trinity, for The Athenian state: a platonic dialogue
 * 1895: George Stuart Robertson, for Herodotus in Britain
 * 1903: Robert William Chapman, Oriel
 * 1907: John Davidson Beazley, Balliol, for Herodotus at the Zoo
 * 1913: Godfrey Rolles Driver, New College
 * 1922: William Francis Ross Hardie, for A Lucianic dialogue between Socrates in Hades and certain men of the present day
 * 1926: Ronald Syme, Oriel, a section of Thomas More's Utopia into Platonic prose
 * 1930: Peter J. McGowen, transl. of Leo Tolstoy's The First Step, Chapter VII
 * 1931: J. L. Austin, Balliol
 * 1995: Deborah W. Rooke, Regent's Park College
 * 1996: Holger Gzella, Worcester
 * 1998: Sinead Willis, New College
 * 1999: Letizia Poli-Palladini, Balliol
 * 2000: Luke Pitcher, Somerville
 * 2002: Oliver Thomas, New College
 * 2009: Christopher White, Magdalen College

Winners of the Gaisford Essay Prize

 * 1996: Ben Rowland, Balliol
 * 1998: No prize awarded (but honourably mentioned: David Hodgkinson, Balliol)
 * 2007: Sarah Cullinan, Oriel
 * 2008: Robert Colborn, New College
 * 2009: Scott Liddle, New College

Winners of the Gaisford Dissertation Prize

 * 1998: No prize awarded
 * 1999: Letizia Poli-Palladini, Balliol, and Tobias Reinhardt, Corpus Christi (jointly)
 * 2002: Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo (jointly), for work on the Latin verb system
 * 2008: Oliver Thomas, New College and Balliol

Notable winning entries
John Davidson Beazley's winning entry for the 1907 Greek Prose prize, Herodotus at the Zoo, was reprinted by Blackwell in 1911 and later appeared in a collection of classical parodies produced in Switzerland in 1968. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls it "an enchanting work".

George Stuart Robertson won the prize for Greek Verse in 1894 with a translation of a hundred lines of Shakespeare into comic iambic verse, and the next year he won the prize for Greek Prose and a Blue for hammer throwing. He heard about the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first of the modern era, and later explained "Greek classics were my proper academic field, so I could hardly resist a go at the Olympics, could I?" On arrival in Athens, he found to his dismay that his discipline of hammer throwing was not to be competed in, so in the spirit of amateurism he entered the shot put, the discus and the tennis. In the discus, he recorded the Games' worst ever throw, and in the tennis doubles he lost his only match but nevertheless won a Bronze Medal. In a ceremony after the Games, Robertson recited an ode to athletic prowess which he had composed in Greek.

In fiction
In Max Beerbohm's satirical tragedy of undergraduate life at Oxford, Zuleika Dobson (1911), the hero, called the Duke of Dorset, has won one of the Prizes: "At Eton he had been called "Peacock", and this nick-name had followed him up to Oxford. It was not wholly apposite, however. For, whereas the peacock is a fool even among birds, the Duke had already taken (besides a particularly brilliant First in Mods) the Stanhope, the Newdigate, the Lothian, and the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse."