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听 听 Email: h.hackett@ucl.ac.uk
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Education and Experience听
Helen Hackett was educated at Manchester High School for Girls and the University of Oxford (Lady Margaret Hall). She was a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, and has been at 皇家华人 since 1990.
Research Interests
Helen has broad interests in Renaissance literature, especially female writers and representations of women. She has written extensively on images of Elizabeth I and on Shakespeare (especially听A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream). She has also published on Renaissance prose fiction, especially Lady Mary Wroth鈥檚听Urania; and on the manuscript poems and letters of the Aston-Thimelby circle, a seventeenth-century Catholic literary network in which women were active.
贬别濒别苍鈥檚 Short History of English Renaissance Drama听was published in 2013. Her latest book is听The Elizabethan Mind: Searching for the Self听in an Age of Uncertainty, published by Yale University Press; full details . Research for the book was supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.听听
You can hear Helen discussing her book The Elizabethan Mind听on the podcast .
You can hear Helen on In Our Time听discussing 听and .
Helen gave an online talk on 'Shakespeare鈥檚 Sisters: Early Women Writers in Westminster Abbey' which you can watch . Her follow-up Q&A on the same topic is available .
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Books
The Elizabethan Mind: Searching for the Self in an Age of Uncertainty听(Yale University Press, 2022)听
(As editor:)听Early Modern Exchanges: Dialogues Between Nations and Cultures, 1550-1750听(Farnham: Ashgate, 2015)
A Short History of English Renaissance Drama听(London: I. B. Tauris, 2012)
Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Meeting of Two Myths听(Princeton University Press, 2009)
Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance听(Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Writers and Their Work: 鈥楢 Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream鈥櫶�(British Council/Northcote House, 1997)
Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary听(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995)
Edition
Introduction to听A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream, ed. Stanley Wells (New Penguin Shakespeare, 2005)
Recent Book Chapters
鈥楬ermits and their meanings: performing retirement at the Elizabethan court.鈥� In Daniel Starza Smith and Hazel Wilkinson (eds), Liber amicorum H. R. Woudhuysen: A Bibliographical Tribute. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.
鈥樷�淪ad stories of the death of queens鈥�: Elizabethan beginnings and endings.鈥� In Katherine Scheil and Linda Shenk (eds), Early Modern Improvisations: Essay on History and Literature in Honor of John Watkins. London: Routledge, 2024. pp. 10-23. Available with Open Access .
鈥樷�淎ll their minds transfigured so together鈥�: the imagination at the Elizabethan playhouse.鈥� In Simon Smith and Emma Whipday (eds), Playing and Playgoing in Early Modern England: Actor, Audience and Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. pp. 242-61.
鈥楿nlocking the mysteries of Constance Aston Fowler鈥檚 verse miscellany (Huntington Library MS HM 904): the Hand B scribe identified.鈥� In Joshua Eckhardt and Daniel Starza Smith (eds),听Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England. Paperback edition: Routledge, 2019. pp. 91-112.
鈥楢nne Boleyn鈥檚 legacy to Elizabeth I: neoclassicism and the iconography of Protestant queenship.鈥� In Anna Riehl Bertolet听(ed.),听Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies: A Festschrift for Carole Levin. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. pp. 157-80.
Recent Journal articles
鈥樷�淟ook on thy Mary with her bitter tears鈥�: Nicholas Breton鈥檚 impersonations of Mary Sidney鈥�. In Alison Findlay (ed.), Special Issue: Penshurst and Beyond. Sidney Journal 41.1-2 (2023): 59-71.
鈥樷�淗e is a better scholar than I thought he was鈥�: debating the achievements of the Elizabethan grammar schools.鈥� Early Modern Voices, ed. Dermot Cavanagh and Robert Maslen, special issue, Journal of the Northern Renaissance听9 (Autumn 2017). Available .
With Yasmin Arshad and Emma Whipday. 鈥楧aniel鈥檚听Cleopatra听and Lady Anne Clifford: from a Jacobean portrait to modern performance.鈥� In Elizabeth Schafer (ed.),听Attending to Early Modern Women as Theatre Makers.听Early Theatre听18.2 (2015): 167-86.
听鈥楢 new image of Elizabeth I: the Three Goddesses theme in art and literature.鈥櫶�Huntington Library Quarterly听77.3 (2014): 225-56.