Languages: English.
Research Interests: Shakespeare, early modern drama and performance, print and manuscript culture, women’s writing, the English Revolution, Anglo-Continental exchange.
Education: Ph.D. University of Leeds; M.A. University of Reading; B.A. University of Oxford.
Departments: Department of English (departmental profile here).
Undergraduate Courses: Shakespeare; early modern dramatists, such as Ben Jonson.
Graduate Courses: Shakespeare, city comedy, “bloody women.”
About:
I received a BA from the University of Oxford and a half-blue for Women’s Lightweight Rowing. At the time, it was impossible to decide which was most important. I then completed an MA thesis under the supervision of Diane Purkiss at the University of Reading, and was awarded AHRC-funded Ph.D. place to work with Martin Butler at the University of Leeds. I also received a Leverhulme Trust fellowship to complete research for my dissertation project in Paris (for which Professor Butler was truly grateful because it got me away from York City Rowing Club). Before arriving at UW-Madison in 2008, I worked as a faculty member in the English department at Keele University, and between 2000 and 2012, I was involved, first as a research associate and then as an associate editor, on the Cambridge Complete Works of Ben Jonson edition. I have published a book and articles on a number of early modern women, and have edited Elizabeth Cary’s play, The Tragedy of Mariam, in a New Mermaids edition. I am particularly interested in feminist and gender theories and my work is deeply concerned with the multitudinous ways in which, as literary scholars, we approach and read texts. I am currently working on a book about clandestine writing in the English Revolution and have recently published articles and given talks about cipher and invisible inks. I am also a keen editor: in 2016, I will deliver my edition of John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan to Arden and begin work on an edition of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi for New Mermaids.
Selected Publications:
Books
Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria (Cambridge University Press, 2006; paperback 2009).
Editions
The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, 7 volumes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), General Editors: Martin Butler, David Bevington, Ian Donaldson; Associate Editors: Karen Britland, Eugene Giddens.
Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam (London: A&C Black, 2010), xxxii + 101pp.
Recent Articles and Book Chapters
“Recent Studies of the Life and Cultural Influence of Queen Henrietta Maria,” English Literary Renaissance, 45.2 (2015), 303-21.
“Psalm 140 and Diana’s Crux in All’s Well That Ends Well,” Notes and Queries, 61.2 (2014), 241-4.
“Reading Between the Lines: Royalist Letters and Encryption in the English Civil Wars,” Critical Quarterly, 15.4 (2014), 15-26.
“Henry Killigrew and Dramatic Patronage at the Stuart Courts,” in Thomas Killigrew (1612–1683), ed. Philip Major (London: Ashgate, 2013)
“‘My God! Madam, There Must Be Only One Black Figure In This Play’: Hamlet, Ophelia and the Romantic Hero,” Shakespeare and Romanticism, ed. Joseph M. Ortiz (London: Ashgate, 2013)