We are happy to announce the winners of the 2001 Early English Books Online/ EEBO-TCP Undergraduate Essay Competition. The papers submitted all offered impressive evidence of the exciting uses students can find for primary texts, and in many cases they also illustrate the noteworthy contributions that undergraduates can make to the field of early modern studies.

We are very glad to have had a role in the work these winners have accomplished, and we are very proud of the scholarship these students have exhibited in their use of texts from EEBO.

To view these papers, please click on the paper titles listed below.

Grand Prize: Stephanie Batkie (Northwestern University) "To Take an Active Role: Reading in Spenser's Faerie Queene"

Second Prize: Susan Cavitch (Middle Tennessee State University) "Ben Jonson and John Donne: Exploring Two Different Approaches to Patronage Through Praise Poems to Lucy, Countess of Bedford"

Third Prize: Lisa Marie Rying (Duke University) "A Valediction: Of the Book:' Donne's Confidence in the Written Word"

Honorable Mention: Peter Eubanks (University of Virginia) "Marguerite de Navarre's Nature Evangelique in Novel LXV of the History of Fortunate Lovers"

Honorable Mention: Xuchys Perez (University of Miami) "The Arden of Faversham & Early Modern Prescriptions Concerning Marriage"

The Grand Prize-winning entry, Stephanie Batkie's "To Take an Active Role, Reading in Spenser's Faerie Queene," calls upon meditative works found in EEBO to explore how the methods of interpretation that Spenser asked his readers to use overlapped with early modern schemes of religious reading. Calling on the works of authors ranging from St. Ignatious Loyola to George Puttenham, Batkie argues that Spenser's Faerie Queene shows concern with the responsibilities of both readers and writers as it guides its audience through the poem. "With access to the EEBO database," Batkie comments, "I was able to conduct my research on the meditative texts circulating in Elizabethan England, as well as writing about the nature of poetry, with an ease and flexibility that would not have been possible without such a resource."

Faculty members, too, have seen changes in their students research and writing as a result of their access to EEBO. "My undergraduates have done much better research than they themselves know by using EEBO," comments Professor Newton Key of the Eastern Illinois University Department of History. He adds that his students "learned a lot about the history of the book trade, the history of printing, and the development of the English language, all without really even knowing what a difficult thing it was they were doing."

Scholars and librarians from a variety of fields ranked the entries and distributed awards for the contest. Along with Key, Arthur Kinney (Professor of English, University of Massachusetts), James Rosenheim (Professor of History and Director Center for Humanities Research, Texas A&M University), Dan Traister (Curator, Research Services Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania) and Hillary Nunn (EEBO-TCP, University of Michigan) served as judges. Maureen Quilligan, Professor of English at Duke University, recused herself from the panel because one of her student entered the contest and eventually earned Third Prize.