Critical Quarterly Special Issue
Professor Adam Smyth
Professor; Tutorial Fellow, Balliol College
I work on the intersection between literary and material forms, primarily (but not exclusively) in terms of texts from 16th and 17th century England. I have written three monographs – Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Profit and Delight: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640-1682 (Wayne State University Press, 2004) – and I have edited or co-edited three collections: A History of English Autobiography (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary (Palgrave 2014, with Gill Partington); and A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England (Boydell and Brewer, 2004). I also co-edited, with Juliet Fleming and William Sherman, a special edition of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2015) on ‘Renaissance Collage: Towards a New History of Reading’, exploring knives, scissors and glue as tools of reading. I've also published on Shakespeare and laughter; George Herbert and Little Gidding; authorship; William Strode; Ben Jonson's creative practices; jokes; diaries; commonplace books; almanacs; reading practices; textual transmission; and satire. With Professor James Daybell, I am the co-editor of Routledge's (formerly Ashgate's) book series Material Readings in Early Modern Culture: the series currently has 21 titles.
In 2018 I received the Special Recognition Award at the Oxford University Student Union awards for teaching, for outstanding service to the undergraduate and graduate community.
Current and recent research projects include:
- editing Pericles for Arden Shakespeare (4th series)
- co-editing Book Parts with Dennis Duncan: a collection of essays on the history of parts of a book (title-page, errata list, chapter heading, blurb, index, wrapper, running-head, etc.) (forthcoming, OUP 2018)
- writing articles on proof pages (with Markman Ellis), and on a newly discovered manuscript miscellany
- building an online database of printed waste in books, with Anna Reynolds (York) and Megan Heffernan (DePaul)
- collaborating with Laurence Sterne's Shandy Hall as a Knowledge Exchange Fellow on a project on writing surfaces
- collaborating with artist Nicola Dale on an immersive installation that explores the experience of the archive.
I enjoy presenting my work both within the academy (in 2017-18, I gave talks at Yale, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, Exeter, and UEA) and beyond: I write regularly for the Times Literary Supplement (for example, here) and the London Review of Books (for example, here), and have appeared on TV and radio in the UK and abroad (for example, here). I host a series of podcasts on work on the history of the book currently going on here at Oxford University: you can listen to this here. With literary journalist James Kidd, I am the co-host of the literary podcast and radio show, Litbits, described by the Guardian as one of the best three literary podcasts.
I work on the intersection between literary and material forms, primarily (but not exclusively) in terms of texts from 16th and 17th century England. I have written three monographs – Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Profit and Delight: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640-1682 (Wayne State University Press, 2004) – and I have edited or co-edited three collections: A History of English Autobiography (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary (Palgrave 2014, with Gill Partington); and A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England (Boydell and Brewer, 2004). I also co-edited, with Juliet Fleming and William Sherman, a special edition of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2015) on ‘Renaissance Collage: Towards a New History of Reading’, exploring knives, scissors and glue as tools of reading. I've also published on Shakespeare and laughter; George Herbert and Little Gidding; authorship; William Strode; Ben Jonson's creative practices; jokes; diaries; commonplace books; almanacs; reading practices; textual transmission; and satire. With Professor James Daybell, I am the co-editor of Routledge's (formerly Ashgate's) book series Material Readings in Early Modern Culture: the series currently has 19 titles.
Current research includes:
- editing Pericles for Arden Shakespeare (4th series)
- co-editing Book Parts with Dennis Duncan: a collection of essays on the history of parts of a book (title-page, errata list, chapter heading, blurb, index, etc.) (forthcoming, OUP 2018)
- writing articles on proof pages (with Markman Ellis), and on a newly discovered manuscript miscellany.
I enjoy presenting my work both within the academy (in 2017-18, I will give talks at Yale, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, Exeter, and UEA) and beyond: I write regularly for the Times Literary Supplement (for example, here) and the London Review of Books (for example, here), and have appeared on TV and radio in the UK and abroad (for example, here). I host a series of podcasts on work on the history of the book currently going on here at Oxford University: you can listen to this here. With literary journalist James Kidd, I am the co-host of the literary podcast and radio show, Litbits, described by the Guardian as one of the best three literary podcasts.
Papers on English literature from 1350 to 1660; graduate teaching in early modern literature, including the history of the book 1450-1650.
