Professor John Pitcher

As a Tutorial Fellow at St John’s I taught most parts of the English undergraduate degree, Course I (from Old English literature through to Wordsworth, and some modern writing), and several parts of Course II (specialist medieval topics and some philology). I now concentrate on early modern poetry, drama and fiction, especially Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. 

I study the literature and history of early modern British elite and middling sort society, especially the poetry, drama and arts of Elizabethan and Jacobean court culture, including Shakespeare. I continue to work on volumes of my multi-volume critical edition of the poet and historian Samuel Daniel (1562/63–1619). My latest publication, an offshoot of editing Daniel, will appear in Textual Cultures in 2023: ‘Daniel, Florio, and the Stationers: the publication of Astrophel and Stella and An Apologie for Poetrie’. Future essays will include ‘Lady Penelope Rich in Essex House in 1590’, ‘Daniel, Spenser and Cadiz’, and ‘Armida’s Siren: “that’s lawful which doth please” ’.