Edmund Kerchever Chambers

Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers, (16 March 1866 – 21 January 1954), usually known as E. K. Chambers, was an English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar. His four-volume work on The Elizabethan Stage, published in 1923, remains a standard resource.

Life Chambers was born in West Ilsley, Berkshire. His father was a curate there, and his mother was the daughter of a Victorian theologian. He was educated at Marlborough College before matriculating at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He won a number of prizes, including the chancellor's prize in English for an essay on literary forgery in 1891. He took a job with the national education department, and married Eleanor Bowman in 1893. His two-volume work on Shakespeare came in 1930, which collected and analyzed the extant evidence of Shakespeare's work and life.

In his retirement, Chambers produced works on Coleridge (1938) and Matthew Arnold (1947). After moving to Eynsham, Oxfordshire, he returned to medieval history, producing a volume in the Oxford history and a local study of Eynsham. He died on 21 January 1954 at Beer, Devon, at the age of 87.

Chambers was invested as a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1912, KBE in 1925. In 1924, he was elected fellow of the British Academy and his biography Samuel Taylor Coleridge was awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

He was a member of the Athenæum.

Works The History and Motives of Literary Forgeries (1891) Poems of John Donne (1896, editor) The Tragedy of Coriolanus (1898, editor) The Mediaeval Stage (2 volumes, 1903); Vol. I Vol. II Early English Lyrics (1907, editor) Carmina Argentea (1918, poems) The Elizabethan Stage (4 volumes, 1923); Vol. I Vol. II Vol. III Vol. IV Shakespeare: A Survey (1925) Arthur of Britain (1927) William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (2 volumes; 1930) Vol. I The Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse (1932, editor) The English Folk-play (1933) Sir Henry Lee (1936) Eynsham Under the Monks (1936) Sir Thomas Wyatt and Some Collected Studies (1937) Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a biographical study (1938) Shakespearean Gleanings (1941) English Literature at the Close of the Middle Ages (1945) Matthew Arnold (1947).