Emma Smith (scholar) explained

Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Hertford College. She has published and lectured widely on William Shakespeare and on other early modern dramatists, and worked with numerous theatre companies. Her lectures are available as podcasts Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre^[1] and Approaching Shakespeare.^[2]

Life and career

Smith was educated at Abbey Grange school in Leeds and did her undergraduate degree at Somerville College, Oxford, from 1988 to 1991. She was a Prize Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.^[3] As part of her work on Shakespeare's First Folio, Smith worked with conservators, digital specialists and crowd-sourced funding on a Bodleian Library project to digitise a copy of the book.^[4] In 2016, she authenticated a new copy of the First Folio found at Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute.^[5]

With Laurie Maguire of Oxford University she published a new argument in 2012 that Shakespeare's play All's Well that Ends Well was a collaboration with Thomas Middleton. The New Oxford Shakespeare edition of 2016, edited by Bourus et al., was the first printed edition of the play to accept this joint attribution.^[6] Another article with Laurie Maguire won the 2014 Hoffman Prize.^[7] She was a script advisor to Josie Rourke's 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots and the BBC’s 2023 documentary series Shakespeare: The Rise of a Genius. She edits the Cambridge University Press journal Shakespeare Survey.

Smith published This Is Shakespeare in 2019. The book was published as a guide to Shakespeare's plays. It extends from her lectures for Oxford undergraduates, which were also used as the basis for her Approaching Shakespeare podcast, where she discusses 20 of Shakespeare's plays in chronological order. She says she wanted the book "to give a sense of Shakespeare's range across his career" but also "to keep the individual chapters self-contained, so that you could read one before going to the theatre."^[8]

She was shortlisted for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize for Portable Magic.^[9] In 2024 she was made an Honorary Bencher at Middle Temple and included in Ribbons, a public sculpture in Leeds celebrating inspirational women.

Bibliography

Selected publications

• Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers (Penguin, 2022) ^[10]
• This Is Shakespeare (Pelican, 2019)^[11]
• Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, (Oxford University Press, 2016)
• The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio, (Bodleian Publishing, 2015)
• Women on the Early Modern Stage: A Woman Killed with Kindness, The Tamer Tamed, The Duchess of Malfi, The Witch of Edmonton (2014)^[12]
• The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England. Eds. Andy Kesson and Emma Smith (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013) ^[13]
• Five Revenge Tragedies: The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, Antonio's Revenge, The Tragedy of Hoffman, The Revenger's Tragedy (Penguin UK, 2012) ^[14]
• The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2012)^[15]
• The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 2007) ^[16]
• Shakespeare's Comedies: a Guide to Criticism (Blackwell Guides to Criticism, 2003)^[17]
• Shakespeare's Histories: a Guide to Criticism (Blackwell Guides to Criticism, 2003)^[18]
• Shakespeare's Tragedies: a Guide to Criticism (Blackwell Guides to Criticism, 2003)^[19]
• Shakespeare in Production: Henry V (2000)
• Thomas Kyd

The Spanish Tragedie (ed. 1998)

External links

• Bodleian Library's First Folio
• Hertford College, Oxford
• Oxford University Department for Continuing Education
• Literature Compass

Oxford podcasts

• Approaching Shakespeare
• Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre

Notes and References

1. http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/not-shakespeare-elizabethan-and-jacobean-popular-theatre
2. http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/approaching-shakespeare
3. Book: Who's Who 2020.
4. http://Firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
5. News: Shakespeare Folio 'astonishing' find. Coughlan. Sean. 7 April 2016. BBC News. 16 September 2017. en-GB.
6. The Radical Argument of the New Oxford Shakespeare. Pollack-Pelzner. Daniel. 19 February 2017. The New Yorker. 16 September 2017. 0028-792X.
7. Web site: Hoffman Prize Winners. The Marlowe Society. 9 November 2021.
8. Web site: No Such Thing as a Stupid Question: On Emma Smith's "This is Shakespeare". 21 December 2021. Cleveland Review of Books. en-US.
9. Web site: 2023-11-14 . Kochanski wins £50k Wolfson History Prize . 2023-11-20 . Books+Publishing.
10. Book: Smith, Emma . Portable Magic . en.
11. Web site: This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smith review – the Bard without the baggage. 6 May 2019. Alex Preston. The Observer. 9 November 2021.
12. Smith, Emma. Women on the Early Modern Stage: A Woman Killed with Kindness, The Tamer Tamed, The Duchess of Malfi, The Witch of Edmonton. Methuen Drama (2014)
13. Andy Kesson and Emma Smith, eds. The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England. Material Readings in Early Modern Culture series. . Journal of British Studies. July 2014 . 53 . 3 . 769–771 . 10.1017/jbr.2014.58 . 9 November 2021. Sauer . Elizabeth .
14. Book: Smith, Emma . Five revenge tragedies . Penguin Books . London . 2012 . 9780141192277 .
15. Book: Smith, Emma . The Cambridge Shakespeare guide . Cambridge University Press . Cambridge . 2012 . 9780521195232 .
16. Review. Journal of British Studies. 37. 3. July 2008. 661–663. James Hirsh. 25482840 .
17. Book: Smith, Emma . Shakespeare's Comedies : a Guide to Criticism . John Wiley & Sons . Chichester . 2007 . 9780470776919 .
18. Book: Smith, Emma . Shakespeare's Tragedies : a Guide to Criticism . John Wiley & Sons, Ltd . Hoboken . 2008 . 9780470776896 .
19. Book: Smith, Emma . Shakespeare's Histories : a Guide to Criticism . John Wiley & Sons . Chichester . 2007 . 9780470776889 .