Shock ending: how the Costa book awards changed reading – and pitted husband against wife | Books | The Guardian

The USP of the Whitbreads, which morphed into the Costas 14 years before they were abruptly scrapped this month, was that they didn't buy into that sort of literary snobbery. For 50 years, they spread a wide and egalitarian net across different genres, supporting bookshops as well as writers and publishers (later panels would include a bookseller). Drabble doesn't remember much about that first awards ceremony, except that Hill was "quite grumpy". The following year, poetry was dropped as a category, in favour of children's fiction. It would take 15 years for it to be reinstated, as part of a roster that by then had grown to include first novels alongside novels, children's fiction and biography.