The main aim of this website is to create an accurate list of my publications so that anyone interested in my work can locate them. I also provide an up-to-date CV that is more accurate and complete than those available elsewhere. The bio-bibliographical sections will remain constant, but under Databases and Work in Progress I plan to add new material as my research advances.
I have always tried to play a part in the design of my books, especially the dust jackets, and I have been fortunate in working with receptive publishers, as the illustrations at the top of this page show. In 1974, when planning with Routledge and Kegan Paul the six volumes of Shakespeare, the Critical Heritage, I persuaded them to take a different image of Shakespeare for each volume, the changes in his appearance (all deriving from Droeshout’s engraving in the First Folio) matching the changes in his reception over those two hundred years. It gives me great pleasure that this series of dust jackets is collectively visible for the first time here, and that the volumes have been reprinted by Routledge. On their right are some of the six volumes so far published of its successor, Shakespeare, the Critical Tradition, dealing with individual plays. Long dormant, it has been re-launched by Bloomsbury, publisher of the Arden Shakespeare. I am co-editor, with Professor Joseph D. Candido (University of Arkansas), who edited King John in 1996. Several new volumes have been commissioned, and when earlier volumes are reprinted they will include revised introductions extending the survey of modern criticism to the present day.
Having spent twelve years working on The Oxford Francis Bacon, first as Chair of the Editorial Board, then as Director, I recently stepped down. Of the planned 16 volumes, eight have been published and eight are in preparation. I continue as Editor-in-Chief of The Collected Works of John Ford (Oxford University Press), of which three volumes have appeared. Vol. I (2011), co-authored with Gilles Monsarrat and Rob Watt, contains Ford’s poetry and prose works. I edited his six co-authored plays in Vols. II and III (2017), of which II is a monograph on the problems of identifying co-authorship, and III contains the plays edited by Christopher Adams, Nigel Bawcutt, Marcus Dahl, Eleanor Lowe, Brian Vickers, Martin Wiggins, and Rowland Wymer. Vol IV, the first of two devoted to Ford’s sole-authored plays, was submitted to the publisher in June 2021. It contains ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, ed. Katsuhiko Nogami, with an introduction by Brian Vickers; Lovers’ Melancholy, ed. Tom Cain; The Broken Heart, ed. Lisa Hopkins; and The Queen, ed. Eleanor Howe and Martin Wiggins. Vol. V is in preparation.
I have recently signed a contract with Boydell and Brewer for a new edition of The Works of Thomas Kyd in two volumes. The Editorial Board consists of myself, †David Bevington, Martin Wiggins, Darren Freebury-Jones, Martin Dimmock, Eugene Giddens, Ian Burrows, Lucy Rayfield, Domenico Lovascio, Daniel Starza Smith, and Rebekah Owens.
Two books are in progress: Recovering Thomas Kyd: a Canon Restored (Princeton University Press), and Saving Shakespeare’s Text. The Crisis in Authorship Studies.
5 July 2021
The Complete Works of John Ford, Volume II and III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 29 September, 2016), pp. 992. ISBN 9780198748878.
The One King Lear (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), pp. 410. ISBN 9780674504844.
The Collected Works of John Ford, Volume I, edited by Gilles Monsarrat, Brian Vickers, and R. J. C.Watt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. xiv, 720. ISBN: 978-0-19-959290-6
Mächtige Worte. Antike Rhetorik und europäische Literatur, by Brian Vickers and Sabine Köllmann (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2008), partial translation of B23, with new material.
Shakespeare, ‘A Lover’s Complaint’, and John Davies of Hereford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. xii, 329.
Shakespeare. The Critical Tradition. The Merchant of Venice, ed. by William Baker and Brian Vickers (London and New York; Continuum, 2004), pp. xli, 437. General Editor’s Preface, pp. ix–xli.
Shakespeare. The Critical Tradition. Coriolanus, 1687–1940, ed. by David George (London and New York; Continuum, 2004), pp. xxvi, 448. General Editor’s Preface, pp. viii–xxiii.
Shakespeare, Co-author. A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. xxix, 561. ISBN: 978-0-19-925653-2.
‘Counterfeiting’ Shakespeare. Evidence, Authorship, and John Ford’s Funerall Elegye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. xxvii, 568.
Shakespeare. The Critical Tradition. Measure for Measure, 1783–1920, ed. by George Geckle (London and NJ: Athlone Press, 2001), pp. xxxvi, 382. General Editor’s Preface, pp. x–xxxiv.
English Renaissance Literary Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), Pp. xv, 675. ISBN: 978-0-19-818679-3
Shakespeare. The Critical Tradition. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1775–1920, ed. by Judith M. Kennedy and Richard F. Kennedy (London and NJ: Athlone Press, 1999), pp. xxi, 461. General Editor’s Preface, pp. x–xix.
Francis Bacon, The Essays and Counsels, Civil and Moral (The Folio Society, 2002).
Francis Bacon, The Essays and Counsels, Civil and Moral (Oxford World’s Classics, 1999): pp. xliii, 216.
Shakespeare. The Critical Tradition. Richard II, 1780–1920, ed. by Charles Forker (London and NJ: Athlone Press), pp. xviii, 593. General Editor’s Preface, pp. x–xv.
Francis Bacon, History of the Reign of King Henry VII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. x, 281. (“Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought”).
Shakespeare. The Critical Tradition. King John, ed. by Joseph Candido (London and NJ: Athlone Press, 1996), pp. xvi, 415. General Editor’s Preface, pp. vi–ix.
Francis Bacon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. li, 813. (“Oxford World’s Classics”).
Francis Bacon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. li, 813. (“The Oxford Authors”).
Francis Bacon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. li, 813. (“The Oxford Authors”).
Francis Bacon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. li, 813.
Ripensare Shakespeare. Questioni di critica contemporanea (Milan, 2001). Italian translation of B27 by Mario Baccianini, Marina Merella, and Alessandra Di Luzio.
Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. xvi, 501. Paperback ed. 1994; repr. 1996.
Returning to Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. viii, 257.
Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry; second ed., with new Preface and additional bibliography (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), pp. vii, 186.
Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry; second ed., with new Preface and additional bibliography (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), pp. vii, 186.
Francis Bacon, German translation of B15 and A30 by Reinhard Kaiser (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1988), pp. 78.
Storia della retorica (Bologna: il Mulino, 1994), pp. 649. Italian translation of B23 by Rocco Coronato; introduction by Andrea Battistini.
In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. xi, 508.
(Editor) English Science, Bacon to Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. xi, 244.
(Editor) English Science, Bacon to Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. xi, 244.
(Editor) Public and Private Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Mackenzie-Evelyn Debate (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1986), pp. xlii, 277. – Introduction, pp. ix–xlii.
(Editor) Arbeit, Musse, Meditation. Betrachtungen zur Vita activa und Vita contemplativa (Zurich: Verlag der Fachvereine, 1985), pp. 307. – Introduction, pp. 1–19.
(Editor) Mentalidades ocultas y científicas en el Renacimento (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1990), pp. 318. Abridged Spanish translation of B19 by Jorge Vigil Rubio.
(Editor) Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. xiv., 408. – Introduction, pp. 1–55.
(Editor) Rhetoric Revalued. Papers from the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1981), pp. 281. – Introduction, pp. 13–39.
(Editor) Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume 6. 1774–1801 (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 650.
(Editor) Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume 5. 1765–1774 (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. xvi, 569.
Francis Bacon (London: Longman, 1978), pp. 46; repr. in British Writers ed. I. Scott-Kilvert, Vol. 1 (New York: Scribner’s, 1979), pp. 257–74.
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (London: Edward Arnold, 1976), pp. 68. (“Studies in English Literature” series).
(Editor) Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume 4. 1753–1765 (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), pp. xiv, 583.
(Editor) Hooker: The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. An Abridged Edition. Co-editor: A.S. McGrade (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1976), pp. 413. Introduction 2: “Hooker’s Prose Style”, pp. 41–59.
(Editor) Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume 3. 1733–1752 (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. xii, 487.
(Editor) Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume 2. 1693–1733 (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. xi, 549.
(Editor) Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume 1. 1623–1692 (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. xi, 448.
Towards Greek Tragedy (London: Longman, 1973), pp. xvi, 658; repr. 1979.
Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry (London: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 180.
(Editor) Seventeenth Century Prose: An Anthology (London: Longman, 1969), pp. 266.
(Editor) The World of Jonathan Swift (Oxford: Blackwell; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. ix, 273. – Introduction, pp. 1–24.
(Editor) Essential Articles for the Study of Francis Bacon (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972), pp. xxiii, 323. – Introduction, pp. xi–xxiii.
(Editor) Essential Articles for the Study of Francis Bacon (Hamden, CT: Archon Press, 1968), pp. xxiii, 323. English publication by Sidgwick & Jackson (London, 1972). – Introduction, pp. xi–xxiii.
The Artistry of Shakespeare’s Prose, Third Edition (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. vii, 452.
The Artistry of Shakespeare’s Prose, Revised Edition (London: Methuen, 1979), pp. x, 452.
The Artistry of Shakespeare’s Prose (London: Methuen, 1968), pp. ix, 452.
Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. xi, 316.
