Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, winner of the Man Booker Prize in London last year, was honoured in New York with another accolade.

The novel, set in the age of King Henry VIII, won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for fiction. It's a sympathetic narrative of royal adviser Thomas Cromwell.

Ms Mantel was not in attendance at the ceremony but issued a statement saying that she was working on a sequel and that the award is "the best possible encouragement".

Others cited included Richard Holmes's highly regarded study of the crossed stars of science and poetry, The Age of Wonder, which received the general nonfiction award.

Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life, a thorough account of the late novelist John Cheever, won for biography, and long-time editor Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End, an atheist's spirited reflection on old age, was the winner for autobiography.

Rae Armantrout's Versed was cited for poetry, while the prize for criticism went to Eula Biss' essays on American life and culture, Notes from No Man's Land.

Honorary awards were given to Joyce Carol Oates for lifetime achievement and to New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella for excellence in reviewing.

The NBCC awards were established in 1974. No cash prizes are given.