Publishing Prize Goes to Baker

The Harvard University Press recently awarded its Faculty prize to Herschel C. Baker, professor of English, for his biography William Hazlitt.

For the first time in the seven-year history of the award, two books were tied for honorable mention: The Real Income of Soviet Russia Since 1928, by Abram Bergson, professor of Economics; and Preface to Plato, by Eric A. Havelock, professor of Greek and Latin.

The prize, which includes an award of $2,000 to the winner, has been given since 1956 for the most distinguished contribution to scholarship by a Faculty member whose work was published by the Press. Baker's book correlates historical, biographical, and critical analysis of the English essayist Hazlitt. Calling it "large, spacious, and scholarly," the New York Times described the biography as "a great journey where the bypaths are as inviting as the main highway."

Bergson uses selected raw Soviet statistical materials to determine the Soviet GNP since start of the five-year plan. Havelock's work is a study of Plato's reaction to the Homeric tradition.