The Stanhope essay prize was an undergraduate history essay prize created at Balliol College, Oxford by Philip Henry Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope in 1855.
Notable Stanhope Prize winners:
John Richard Magrath, 1860 Francis Jeune, 1863, 1st Baron St Helier Thomas Pitt Taswell-Langmead, 1866 Thomas Buchanan, 1868, Liberal politician Arthur Francis Leach, 1872Richard Lodge, 1875 Charles Harding Firth, 1877, British historianArthur Elam Haigh, 1878 Holden Hutton, 1881 William Carr, 1884, biographerOwen Morgan Edwards, 1886 George Arnold Wood, 1889, English Australian historianJohn Buchan, 1897, British novelistRobert Rait, 1899 Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, 1902, New College, Oxford, British classical scholar and historianArchibald Main, 1903George Stuart Gordon, 1905 Vivian Hunter Galbraith, 1911, English historianMichael Sadleir, 1912 Aldous Huxley, 1916, English writerBruce McFarlane, 1924 Bernard Miller, 1925, British businessmanMaurice Ashley, editor of The Listener.Derek Pattinson, 1951, Secretary-General of the General Synod of the Church of England In Max Beerbohm's satirical tragedy of undergraduate life at Oxford, Zuleika Dobson (1911), the hero Duke of Dorset, was awarded, amongst others, the Stanhope:
At Eton he had been called "Peacock", and this nick-name had followed him up to Oxford. It was not wholly apposite, however. For, whereas the peacock is a fool even among birds, the Duke had already taken (besides a particularly brilliant First in Mods) the Stanhope, the Newdigate, the Lothian, and the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse.
