We’re delighted to announce that the European publicity campaign for Marion Turner’s The Wife of Bath: A Biography has won the 2023 Publishers Publicity Circle Award for Best Academic Campaign. Two PUP campaigns were additionally named as Finalists for the 2023 Prize.
The Wife of Bath campaign, expertly led by European Publicity Manager Carmen Jimenez, saw wide coverage across broadsheets, radio, and podcasts, including reviews in the Financial Times, New Stateman, The Independent, BBC History Magazine, The Spectator, The Guardian, The Times, and the Sunday Times among many others, and author interviews with Women’s Hour, on BBC Radio 4, Free Thinking on BBC Radio 3, and the History Extra podcast.
The Wife of Bath – Turner’s second book with PUP following her awarding winning debut, Chaucer: A European Life (2018) – tells the story of the most popular, scandalous character in The Canterbury Tales. Turner reveals the origins of the Wife of Bath, explains how she related to real medieval women, and discusses where her many travels have taken her since the fourteenth century, from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. First published in cloth in January 2022, with a paperback release in March 2024, The Wife of Bath was named a book of the year by BBC History Magazine and a best book of summer 2023 by the Financial Times and was awarded the History Reclaimed Book of the Year Prize.
In addition to The Wife of Bath, the publicity campaigns for Virtuous Bankers: A Day in the Life of the Eighteenth-Century Bank of England and Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Man – both adeptly led by Associate Publicist Charlotte Coyne – were finalists for the Best Academic Campaign.
Virtuous Bankers by Anne L. Murphy shows how the eighteenth-century Bank of England went from a private institution to become “a great engine of state.” It was reviewed in the Financial Times, The Spectator, BBC History Magazine, with author interviews on BBC Start the Week, History Extra podcast, Not Just the Tudors with Suzannah Lipscomb, and Bloomberg Odd Lots and was named a Financial Times book of the year.
Fool by Peter K. Andersson is the first biography of Henry VIII’s court fool, William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor age. Named a History Today book of the year, Fool was reviewed in The Times, BBC History Magazine, Times Literary Supplement, and The Telegraph, among other outlets.
In total, PUP books accounted for three of six Academic campaign finalists for the year, with the 2023 awards marking the second time in four years that a PUP campaign has been recognized, with the publicity campaign for Chaucer: A European Life, managed by former PUP Senior Publicist Katie Lewis, winning the 2019 Academic prize.