The Jules and Frances Landry Award is presented annually to the LSU Press book published during the year which, in the judgment of the Press, constitutes the most outstanding achievement in the field of southern studies. From the first Landry Award winner—George Brown Tindall’s classic Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945 (1968)—to the most recent, the recipients of the Landry Award have all made significant contributions to scholarship on the American South.
Jules and Frances Landry, both graduates of the LSU Law School, practiced law in Baton Rouge for more than fifty years. They shared a keen interest in the history and culture of the South, and the Landry Award is a continuing expression of that interest. The prize is funded from an endowment the Landrys established specifically for that purpose, and includes a monetary award for each winning author.