Maxwell had been contacting members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, seeking nominations for Shirley for the Harold Vursell Award, given each year for recently published prose notable for the quality of its style. She did not win (the award went that year to Tom Wolfe), but her nomination was endorsed by Bernard Malamud and Arthur Miller. Miller wrote Maxwell, “I am in the middle of ‘Venus’ and have not been so enthralled by a book in many years […] I think she merits everything anybody can give her.”