The George B. Sohier Prize, established by Bostonian businessman Waldo Higginson in 1890, is a $250 annual award for the best thesis of approximately 10,000 words or text submitted by a student of English or Modern Literature at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 or Radcliffe College

Radcliffe College

Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the coordinate college for Harvard University. It was also one of the Seven Sisters colleges. Radcliffe College conferred joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas beginning in 1963 and a formal merger agreement with...

. Resident graduate students attending Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is the academic unit responsible for many post-baccalaureate degree programs offered through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University...

 are also eligible for the prize. Higginson’s $6,500 grant, later increased to $7,000, was given with the stipulation that the prize money would be drawn from its annual interest and that any surplus would go toward Harvard University Library

Harvard University Library

The Harvard University Library system comprises about 90 libraries, with more than 16 million volumes. It is the oldest library system in the United States, the largest academic and the largest private library system in the world...

 for the purchase of books. It was also understood that the annual prize would not be awarded if the Faculty of Arts and Sciences deemed there were no suitable entries for that year. Waldo Higginson (1814–1894) graduated from Harvard in 1833 and had given the grant to honor his brother-in-law, George Brimmer Sohier (1832–1877), an 1852 Harvard graduate.

Early recipients

Year	Prize Winner	Thesis
1890	Curtis Hidden Page Curtis Hidden Page Curtis Hidden Page was a United States educator and writer. He was born in Greenwood, Missouri. He graduated from Harvard University, where in 1890 he became the first recipient of the George B. Sohier Prize for literature...	The Influence of Diderot on German Literature
1891	Raymond Calkins	Criticism During the Classical Periods of German Literature.
1892*	John Corbin John Corbin John Corbin was an American dramatic critic and author, born in Chicago, educated at Harvard, where he was awarded the George B. Sohier Prize for literature. After his graduation from Harvard, Corbin soon became an established writer in New York City...	The Elizabethan Hamlet
1892*	William Tenney Brewster	The Rise and Influence of Reviews
1893
1894	William Vaughn Moody William Vaughn Moody William Vaughn Moody was a United States dramatist and poet. Author of The Great Divide, first presented under the title of The Sabine Woman at the Garrick Theatre in Chicago on April 12, 1906...	Sidney’s Arcadia and Its Sources
1895
1896	Carleton Eldredge Noyes	Joseph and Thomas Warton and in their relationship to the English Romantic Movement
1897	Beulah Marie Dix	Published Collections of English and Scottish Ballads, 1765-1802."
1898
1899
1900	Henry Latimer Seaver	The Shepherd’s Calendar and Its Sources
1901	Charles M. Underwood	A Comparison between the Critical Methods of Sainte Beuve and Taine
1902
1903	Ernest Bernbaum	Elizabethan Domestic Dramas
1904	Frances Elizabeth Newell	Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Sabrina Legend
1905	Walter Ralston Nelles	The Dramatic Works of Henry Fielding
1906	Homer Howells Harbour	The Influence of Keats on English Poetry of the nineteenth Century
1907*	Hermann Hagedorn Hermann Hagedorn Hermann Hagedorn was an American author, poet and biographer.He was born in New York City and educated at Harvard University, where he was awarded the George B. Sohier Prize for literature, the University of Berlin, and Columbia University... Jr.	The Plays of the English Comedians in Germany, and the Reasons underlying the Mutilation of the Elizabethan Originals
1908
1909	Louise Anne Hannon	Lord Chesterfield, A Study of the Survival in the 18th century of the Aristocratic Ideal\
1910	Norman Otto Foerster	Henry David Thoreau: Poet
1911	Benjamin Harrison Lehman
1912
1913
1914*	Delight Walkly Hall
1914*	Elizabeth Jackson
1915	Harold Gersham Files,
1916	Helen Constance White
1917*	Harold Shepherd Bennett	Comparison of the Lyric Poetry of Mörike and Heine with Reference to the Principles of Lessing’s Laocoön”
1917*	Waldo Cutler Peeble	Swedenborg’s Influence on Goethe”
1918	Martin Luther Hope,	Thomas Hardy”
1919
1920	Stephen Albert Freeman	A Comparative Study of Aeschylus and Corneille
		* Prize Shared By Dual Winners