Barbara Everett

Barbara Everett is an emeritus fellow in English at Somerville College, Oxford. Her books include Poets in Their Time and Young Hamlet: Essays on Shakespeare’s Tragedies. She published editions of Antony and Cleopatra and All’s Well That Ends Well, as well as writing many influential essays on the plays. Among her subjects in the LRB have been Shakespeare’s romances, the Sonnets, Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure and Falstaff. Her selected pieces for the LRB will be published later this year.

Letter

Eliot at Smokefall

24 January 1985

SIR: Since this correspondence started off from Peter Ackroyd’s complaint that Eliot’s poem ‘Burnt Norton’ is not on any map, Charles Plouviez’s complaint that I can’t read a map has a certain almost pleasing familiarity. Closed circles by definition are hard to break out of; Mr Plouviez may not be convinced by having his mistake proved to him. It does, however, need to be got out of the...
Letter

Browning Versions

4 August 1983

Barbara Everett writes: Park Honan’s idea of an idea is not mine. I was writing on Browning, and I mentioned recent editions – not just of Browning but of other poets – only to call attention to them. Textual criticism has its place, and the merits of the new Oxford Browning will no doubt be assessed in the academic journals. Mr Honan is wrong to say that I implied that the new Oxford edition...

Talking about Shakespeare

Frank Kermode, 28 September 1989

Barbara Everett’s book consists of her four Northcliffe Lectures, given at University College London in 1988, on Hamlet and the other ‘major’ tragedies, together with a number...

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Everett’s English Poets

Frank Kermode, 22 January 1987

Faced with the average book of modern literary criticism, the reviewer may wisely resolve to say nothing about the author’s skills as a writer of prose. If they ever existed, they would...

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