Winner: Lidster, Amy. “‘With much labour out of scattered papers’: The Caroline Reprints of Thomas Heywood’s 1 and 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody.” Renaissance Drama 49.2 (2021): pp. 205–228.
The Stevens/Palmer committee awards this year’s Palmer Award for the best new essay in early drama archival research to Amy Lidster, Departmental Lecturer in English Language and Literature at Jesus College, Oxford, for her article “‘With much labour out of scattered papers’: The Caroline Reprints of Thomas Heywood’s 1 and 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody” published in Renaissance Drama in 2021. This deeply researched study of the early publication history of Thomas Heywood’s 1 and 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody puts forward an innovative model of early modern production that includes not only the playwright and the publisher, but also “broader networks of contributors that destabilize the idea of single agency or authorship.”