About
I am a literary critic and book historian who works on the literary and material cultures of the early modern period, with particular focus on Shakespeare and editorial practice.
I’m delighted that my first book was recently published: Shakespeare’s Syndicate: The First Folio, its Publishers, and the Early Modern Book Trade (Oxford University Press, 2022), presents a fresh account of the most important document in the history of the Shakespearean text. It was described as “completely fresh and fascinating” and “required reading for anyone interested in Shakespeare, his plays, and his life and afterlife in print” by Zachary Lesser, Edward W. Kane Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
Other of my academic essays have appeared in English Literary Renaissance (a reading of The Rape of Lucrece that explores feminist book history and issues of scale in early modern studies); The Library (an account of a new Shakespearean private library); Times Higher Education; the Times Literary Supplement and the Review of English Studies. I have forthcoming essays about the conceptual status of early modern bookshops in the writerly imagination and (for Critical Inquiry) about the crossover between early modern book history and musicology.
With co-author Alice Leonard I am currently working on a project about the relationship between space and literary activity in the early modern period called Bookspace. Our project, under contract to Cambridge University Press, examines unusual spaces of reading, writing, or bookmaking: pockets, Frost Fairs, and coffins, among others. At the same time, my current monograph project examines the scale of early modern studies by examining the history and affordances of the major categories on which we rely: the individual copy; the edition; and the ‘work’.
– Ben Higgins
Career Development Fellow in English Literature
Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
Publications
* Book Chapter: ‘’The Book-sellars Shop’: Browsing, Reading, and Buying in Early Modern England’ in Adam Smyth ed., The Oxford Handbook to the History of the Book in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2023).
* Monograph: Shakespeare’s Syndicate: The First Folio, its Publishers, and the Early Modern Book Trade (Oxford University Press, 2022)
* Journal Article: ‘Judith and Lucrece: Reading Shakespeare Between Copy and Work’: English Literary Renaissance 52.1 (2022): pp. 34–71 (essay selected as editors’ highlight and advertised in the TLS, 16 April 2021).
* Review: Claire M. L. Bourne, Typographies of Performance in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020). The Library 23.3 (2022): pp. 270–72.
* Review Article: David Pearson, Provenance Research in Book History: A Handbook (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2019). Times Literary Supplement, 10 April 2020.
* Journal Article: ‘‘Shackspeers playes’ and ‘Donnes Poem’: the Library of James Marsh, DD,’ The Library, March 2021, pp. 33–56.
* Review: Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age (Yale UP, 2019). Times Higher Education, No. 2,411 (6-12 June 2019) p. 50.
* Review: Emma Smith, The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio (Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 2016). The Bodleian Library Record, April 2019.
* Book Chapter: ‘Printing the First Folio,’ in Emma Smith ed., The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623), (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016), pp. 30-47.
* Review: Emma Smith, Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016). Review of English Studies 68.283 (2017): pp. 174-175.
* Review: Jeffrey Todd Knight, Bound to Read: Compilations, Collections, and the Making of Renaissance Literature (Philadelphia: U of Philadelphia P, 2013). Review of English Studies 65 (2014): pp. 548-550.
* Review: Paul Werstine, Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012). Review of English Studies 65 (2014): pp. 167-169.
* Blog Essay: ‘Lefties or Righties? The Handwriting of Shakespeare’s Publishers,’ in Sprint for Shakespeare: a Digital Facsimile of the First Folio (web, 2013): //shakespeare.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/2013/06/03/lefties-or-righties-the-handwriting-of- shakespeares-publishers/
Teaching Experience
Undergraduate Courses at the University of Oxford (taught by seminar and tutorial)
* Paper 1 (‘Shakespeare’), taught between 2013-2022.
* Paper 3 (‘Literature in English, 1550-1660’), 2015-2022.
* Paper 4 (‘Literature in English, 1660-1760’), 2016-2022.
* Paper 5 (‘Literature in English, 1760-1830’), 2019-2021.
* Paper 6 (‘Early Modern Texts in Motion’), 2018-2021.
* Paper 7 (‘Dissertation’), 2017-22.
Undergraduate Lecture Series
* ‘Postcolonial Shakespeare’: Four undergraduate lectures exploring colonial readings of Shakespeare’s plays.
* ‘Shakespeare’s Apocrypha: Canonicity, Authorship, and Scholarship’: Six undergraduate lectures on marginal and apocryphal Shakespearean texts.
* ‘Editing Shakespeare’: Four undergraduate lectures exploring the editorial history of Shakespeare’s texts.
Undergraduate Course at Zhejiang University, China
‘Academic Writing in Literary Studies’, July 2018: Twelve classes and workshops over a period of two weeks teaching writing practice and critical thinking for humanities undergraduates.
Postgraduate Courses at the University of London (taught by seminar)
‘An Introduction to Bibliography’: June 2019. Convenor and tutor for week-long course run as part of the London Rare Books School at the Institute for English Studies in Senate House. I designed the course, which provided a comprehensive introduction to the study of early modern books and manuscripts as material objects in the early modern period.
Postgraduate Courses at the University of Oxford (taught by seminar and tutorial)
* M.St 1550-1700: ‘Literature: Contexts and Approaches, 1550-1700’, 2018-19: Co-convenor of compulsory eight-week course introducing the cohort to key texts, concepts, and approaches for study of the early modern period.
*M.St 1550-1700: ‘Early Modern Textual Cultures: Writing and Reading’, 2017-20. Co-taught course in book history and bibliography for the study of early modern literature, culminating in an assessed research essay. Supervisory duties for all students in cohort to produce extended research essay.
* M.St 1550-1700: Essay writing workshops designed to help graduate students produce research essays for ‘Early Modern Textual Cultures’ course, 2015-2018.
* M.St 1550-1700: Dissertation. I have supervised a range of early modern dissertation projects on literary and material culture, including work on the New Bibliographers, Anthony Munday’s civic pageantry, and the materiality of Margaret Cavendish’s writing, among other topics.