Katherine Duncan-Jones

Katherine Dorothea Duncan-Jones (13 May 1941 – 16 October 2022) was an English literature and Shakespeare scholar, Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge (1965–1966), and of Somerville College, Oxford (1966–2001). From 1998 to 2001, she was Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford.

Background Katherine Dorothea Duncan-Jones was born in Chichester, Sussex on 13 May 1941, to the philosopher Austin Duncan-Jones and the literary scholar Elsie Duncan-Jones (née Phare). She was a senior research fellow of Somerville College from 2001 until her death.

In 1991, Duncan-Jones was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). She was a prolific writer and essayist, whose articles often appeared in Renaissance Quarterly. She was a beloved teacher and supported younger scholars, especially women, in academia. For many years, she regularly reviewed productions of early modern drama for The Times Literary Supplement. Her speciality was early modern literature, and she had particular interests in clowns, transvestism, visual art and Italian and Classical influences on Renaissance British literature. Her early work focused on the work of Sir Philip Sidney, the subject of her B. Litt. thesis, of whom she wrote a definitive biography and a collected edition.

She wrote a pair of biographies of William Shakespeare, notable for their willingness to challenge received wisdom, their situating of Shakespeare within the context of his time, and their lack of "bardolatry"; Duncan-Jones was always well aware that there can be a vast distance between a person and their artistic work. Her biographical writing on Shakespeare pointed to evidence she discovered, through careful study of archives, that the man, if not the poet, was a social climber obsessed with acquiring his coat of arms. Like her earlier work on Sidney, her biographies of Shakespeare unearthed the "man behind the myth". Duncan-Jones is remembered for her love and knowledge of the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, her devotion to Renaissance literature and to the Bodleian Library, and her love of live theatre, especially productions of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. She produced a definitive edition of Shakespeare's poems for Arden (with Henry Woudhuysen) and of Shakespeare's sonnets (also for the Arden Shakespeare).

Broadcasting Duncan-Jones made four appearances as a panelist on the BBC Radio 4 series In Our Time, discussing Shakespeare's life (2001); Christopher Marlowe (2005); King Lear (2008); and The Tempest (2013).

Selected works Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet. Yale University Press 1991 Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works, editor. Oxford University Press 2009 Shakespeare's Poems, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones and H. R. Woudhuysen, London 2007. Shakespeare. An ungentle Life. London 2010. Shakespeare. Upstart Crow to Sweet Swan 1592–1623. London 2011. Shakespeare's Sonnets, editor. Arden 2010.