James David Forbes collecting prize
Enter the James David Forbes collecting prize to be in with a chance of winning £500.
We want to encourage University of St Andrews students to build their own collection of printed, manuscript, or photographic material, so each year University Collections runs a competition to award £500 to the student with the best collection.
The prize is offered in honour of James David Forbes (1809-1868), the eminent scientist and Principal of the United College of St Salvator and St Leonard at St Andrews, whose library was presented to the University in 1929.
We are particularly excited this year as 2025 marks the ten year anniversary of the prize. To highlight the occasion, we've had some posters and bookmarks printed at the Crail Press by Dawn Hollis - the winner of the inaugural prize in 2015.
If you are studying at the University, we invite you to enter the competition and tell us about your collection.
For questions about the prize, please email Briony Harding at bla1@st-andrews.ac.uk.
Entry guidelines
The collection must be owned by you, put together by you, and at its core have physical material with writing on it. For example, it may consist of:
- books
- magazines
- postcards
- sheet music
- record sleeves
- knitting patterns
- printed ephemera (advertisements, programmes, menus, or similar)
- manuscripts
- photographic material
- any combination of the above, brought together under a common theme.
Audiovisual material may be part of the collection, but it must support the core collection, and not form the basis of it. The age, number of items, or monetary value are not important - we want to know what excites you about the items you have collected.
When and how to enter
To submit your entry, complete the online application form and attach the following by midday on Monday 24 March 2025:
1. An essay of up to 2,500 words:
- telling us why and how your collection was assembled
- explaining what makes your collection interesting
- giving a list of five items that you would like to add to your collection, explaining how they would improve it.
2. An annotated bibliography of your items, including comments on:
- Condition
- Provenance
- Variant edition (where relevant)
- Illustration
You may include photographs of your collection, but this is optional.
Read the rules to enter the James David Forbes collecting prize before submitting your entry.
Shortlisted entrants will be invited to give a brief presentation of their collection to a panel of judges. The final award will be based on the interest, originality, thoughtfulness, and creativity of the collection, and the persistence of the collector.
The prize
- £500 to spend on building your collection
- £250 to spend on an item for University Collections
- Entry to the Antiquarian Booksellers Association's National Book Collecting Prize
Collections of former winners
If you are looking for inspiration, read about the collections of our former winners:
- 2024: Benjamin Parris, 'March of the Grenguins'
- 2023: James Erickson, ‘A collection of Tennysonian Arthuriana’
- 2022: Lakshmi Thiagarajan, ‘A glimpse into the history and practise of South Indian classical dance’
- 2021: Paul Thompson, ‘From Salt to Satan: An introduction to a collection of “lesbian pulp” as cultural items’
- 2019: Antares Wells, ‘A Century of Photographs, Found in Australia’
- 2018: Parker Gordon, ‘Staging and Stories: Twentieth-Century British Pageants’
- 2017: Arthur der Weduwen, ‘The daily literature of the Dutch Golden Age’
- 2016: Jenny Elwin, ‘Halcyon Days: Children's Literature c. 1880 – 1945’
- 2015: Dawn Hollis, ‘High and Distant Places: a travel, exploration, and mountaineering collection’