Earliest Commendations and Awards: 1930s And 1940s

Keen to establish itself as an organisation dedicated to the celebration of Scottish cultural life in its first year, the Saltire Society set to work establishing a number of cultural awards. These included a housing award and an inaugural book of the year commendation. For the years 1936– 37, these commendations were awarded to Robert Gore-Brown's biography of the fourth earl of Boswell, James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell, and Neil Gunn's novel Highland River, both published in 1937 (the Society favoured the term ‘commendation’ over ‘award’ through the 1930s and 1940s). The judges for these commendations were the writers and early advocates and members of the Society – Eric Linklater, Compton Mackenzie and Edwin Muir. In 1937, two further commendations were made to Agnes Mure Mackenzie's The Passing of the Stewarts (1937), and Robert McLellan's Three Plays in Scots (1937). Although there is no archival record of whether Linklater, Mackenzie and Muir continued to act as judges after 1937, George Bruce suggests that the judges remained the same until the outbreak of war in 1939 brought the ‘discriminating assessments of the adjudicators’ to an end. The Society's book of the year commendations would continue until 1940, with Fred Urquhart's Time Will Knit (1938) earning the accolade in 1939, and Edwin Muir's autobiography The Story and the Fable (1940) and J. A. Bowie's The Future of Scotland (1939) receiving commendations in 1940.

Even in these early years of the Society, there was interest in expanding the range of literary awards and commendations it would offer. The Society's 1937 annual report stated that during their AGM that year it had been suggested that they found a poetry prize which would be ‘awarded annually for the more meritorious first work published by a Scot living in Scotland’. It was also suggested that the Society establish an award for ‘first novels’, but the Scottish journalist, politician and future leader of the SNP, William Power, argued against instituting more awards for the celebration of literature, suggesting that ‘what was wanted for novels was Birth Control’. A comment indicating that Power believed the literary market was already saturated and the Society should not add to this by establishing an award to encourage firsttime novelists.