From the American Society of Indexers press release:
The American Society of Indexers (ASI) and the H.W. Wilson Company will present the 2002 Award for Excellence in Indexing to Margie Towery of West Lafayette, Indiana, for her index to The Letters of Matthew Arnold, edited by Cecil Y. Lang and published by the University Press of Virgina (www.upress.virginia.edu/books/arnold_lang.html). The six volumes of close to 4,000 letters are described as "meaty and delightful," providing a "portrait of an age and a person." The Wilson Award committee, chaired by Martin White, was impressed by the thoroughness of the index and its usefulness to scholars. The committee felt that the index "stands as a shining example" for anyone undertaking a similar project. Ms. Towery will receive a check for $1,000 and a formal presentation at the ASI annual meeting in May 2002.... The ASI/Wilson Award recognizes indexers and publishers who provide high-quality indexes to serve their readers (for more information on the award, go to http://www.asindexing.org/site/awards.shtml#wilson).

Towery's acceptance speech:
         To begin, I want to paraphrase Sally Field's comments at the Academy Awards some years ago: You like my index, you really like it! Wow! But seriously, I am deeply honored by this recognition from my peers. I'd like to thank the committee for their efforts and the H. W. Wilson Company for its continuing support of this award.
         A huge amount of credit for this award must go to the University Press of Virginia, especially Ellen Satrom, the in-house editor, and Cecil Lang, the academic editor of the letters. These people believed firmly in the need for a full-fledged, detailed, scholarly, cumulative index--and my understanding is that they had to go out and find the funds for it. Both Ellen Satrom and Professor Lang were helpful throughout the indexing process as well. Indeed, the marketing for volume six describes the series-cumulative index as an invaluable tool. But that's not all. When Ellen saw the information on the Wilson Award, she submitted the Arnold index for judging, then told me about it. To me, this highlights why it is so important for us as indexers to give critical acclaim to presses like Virginia that are committed to quality indexes.
         I also want to assure you that the Arnold index was created under the conditions that most full-time freelance indexers usually work under: an overly full work schedule and lots of life stuff. I worked on this index for the first five months of 2001, in amongst many other scholarly indexes. So Arnold rubbed shoulders with popular images of immigration, violence in early modern Europe, hunger in South Africa, Illinois judicial scandals, California earthquakes, New York's Grand Central Terminal, and other equally odd bedfellows.
         During that same period, my husband and I also started house hunting. We were living in a family-oriented subdivision and had promised ourselves that as soon as our two daughters finished college, we'd look for someplace rather more private. We found just such a place and signed the papers in February. So then we had to hustle and get our house on the market--and keep it clean the whole time. I kept plugging along on the Arnold and other indexes and packing and whatnot.
         One of the most distressing things I had to do for the Arnold project was to destroy the first four volumes. They were already in print, so I had to slice off the bindings and cut apart the pages. I felt like a book cannibal. At any rate, in early spring, I was preparing to do that to volume three. It was awfully cold in the garage, so I took my trusty utility knife and stood at the kitchen counter, thinking, "I'll just be extra careful; it'll be fine." . . . Did you know there are people who will come to your house and repair gouges in your countertop?
         Not long after that, we moved ourselves to the new house. The office was freshly painted and stenciled and all ready. I had carefully packed and moved the "Arnold box." I was getting close to finishing the entries at that point. Two weeks after we moved, we also moved our daughter Lisa from Athens, Ohio, to Chicago. That was early May and I had begun editing the index. I knew this would take geometrically longer than six separate volumes, but I was still scrunched for time. I sent the index off just a couple of days before I left for the Boston conference.
         For those of you who met me in Boston and had the impression that I was like a deer caught in the headlights, here's why: 13,657 entries, with 33,344 page references and 440 cross-references. I know many of you routinely create indexes much longer than this, but this is certainly the largest index I've done. The press provided a few style guidelines but basically I had free reign to create the index that I felt would be best for the Arnold letters.
         In addition to recognizing the H. W. Wilson Company for its support of the award and the University Press of Virginia for its support for quality indexing, there's one other person who deserves mention here: Matthew Arnold himself. I have to confess that when I accepted this project, I was sure I would be sick of Arnold by the time I got to volume three. On the contrary, as I was completing the entries for volume six, I found myself, having traced his life from 1822-1888, then facing the departure of a dear friend.
         Some scholars will come to these letters to tease out Arnold's political ideas, to amplify his literary writings, even to examine the state of education in England at the time. But what I have gained from the letters is an enduring sense of Arnold's humanity, his love for country, family, friends, and home, and his desire to create a life worthy of living. I'd like to share a few excerpts that highlight this.
         In a January 1875 letter to Rose Kingsley, Arnold wrote of her father, Charles Kingsley, "I think he was the most generous man I have ever known; the most forward to praise what he thought good, the most willing to admire, the most free from all thought of himself in praising and in admiring." This is indexed under "generosity, reflections on."
         Many of his letters were focused on his wife and children, his mother, and his siblings. In December 1881, Arnold opened a letter to his grown daughter Lucy with this: "My darling child. Here I am, sitting in the old place, where I have sat every winter now for some thirty years, the gas lighted at 12 o'clock in the day, as it so often is, and a delightful quiet time for letter writing. Your letters are a great pleasure to us, and we like to think of your being in such dear company, and so well taken care of, and so happy."
         There were three important Thomas Arnolds in his life: his father, his brother, and his son. Thomas his son, nicknamed Toddy or Tommy, was never terribly healthy, and Arnold and his wife were devastated when he died in 1868. Arnold wrote to his friend, Louisa, Lady de Rothschild: "His mother and I had watched him through so many ebbings and flowings of his scanty stock of vital power that we had always hopes for him; and till I went into his room last Monday morning an hour before the end, I did not really think he would die. The astonishing self-control which he had acquired in suffering was never shown more than in the last words he said to me. . . . He whispered to me in his poor labouring voice--`Don't let Mamma come in.' At his age, that seems to me heroic self-control."
         Of his siblings, Arnold was closest to his sister Jane and he often wrote to her. In 1854, he wrote, "I have so much to say to you, you dear soul. . . . There is no one and never will be any one who enters into what I have done as you have entered into it [that is, reads his poetry]." These brief quotes provide a sense of Arnold in terms of his family, but you might also wish to peruse Arnold's comments on such things as the Church of England, civil liberty, education (he was a school inspector), his home at Pains Hill Cottage, science, and even sports. They are all reflected in the index, somewhere between Abbey, Henry Eugene, and the Zulu war.
         I suppose some of you may wish for me to give some piece of advice based on what I've learned in the process of creating the Arnold index. So here 'tis: Go home and write a letter to someone you love, and if you're lucky enough to get a letter in return, treasure it.
         Thank you.