Muriel Clara Bradbrook

Muriel Clara Bradbrook (born April 27, 1909 ; died June 11, 1993 in Cambridge ) was a British literary scholar and Shakespeare scholar. She was a professor of English at the University of Cambridge and head of Girton College there .

life and work

Muriel Bradbrook was the eldest child of Samuel Bradbrook, a superintendent of the English Coast Guard, and his wife, Annie Wilson, nee Harvey. She attended Hutcheson's Girls' School in Glasgow and Oldershaw High School in Wallasey . She came to Girton College in 1927 and completed a three-year bachelor's degree at the University of Cambridge by 1930 . She earned "First Class Honors" in both parts of the Cambridge trip in English . She was an "Ottlie Hancock Research Fellow" from 1932 to 1935 and obtained a PhD in 1932. In 1935/36 she spent a year at the University of Oxford and on her return to Cambridge became a lecturer in English. She stayed there all of her further academic life. In 1962 she became deputy mistress (head of the college) and in 1968 she replaced Dame Mary Cartwright as head of the college. By 1950 she had already written five extensive works on literary criticism , and in the following years she worked on Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Age . In the two studies The Rise of the Common Player (1962) and Shakespeare the Craftsman she developed the idea that Shakespeare's works were just as dependent on the economic and social situation of his time as on the technical conditions of the theater productions of the Elizabethan period. She wrote a total of 17 books on Henrik Ibsen , Lowry and Conrad, among others . In 1948 she became "University Lecturer" at the University of Cambridge, in 1962 "Reader" and in 1965 Professor of English. She was the first female holder of this position in Cambridge. Bradbrook was visiting professor at the Universities of Santa Cruz , Tokyo and Rhodes , South Africa . From 1987 to 1990 she was a lecturer at the Graduate School of Renaissance Studies at Warwick University. During her time as the mistress at Girton College, she wrote a story of the college for the 100th anniversary under the title That Infidel Place . She retired in 1976 and was made a lifetime fellow. In 1990 she was elected a member of the British Academy .

Selected publications

• Elizabethan Stage Conditions: A Study of Their Place in the Interpretation of Shakespeare's Plays (1932)
• Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy (1935)
• The School of Night: A Study in the Literature Relationships of Sir Walter Raleigh (1936)
• Andrew Marvell (1940) with MG Lloyd Thomas
• Joseph Conrad: Poland's English Genius (1941)
• Ibsen - The Norwegian: A Revaluation (1946)
• TS Eliot (1950)
• Shakespeare and Elizabethan Poetry: A Study of His Earlier Work in Relation to the Poetry of the Time (1951)
• Themes & Convention of Elizabethan Tragedy (1952)
• The Queen's Garland: Tudor Poems Now Collected in Honor of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (1953) editor
• The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (1955)
• Sir Thomas Malory (1958)
• The Rise of the Common Player: A Study of Actor and Society in Shakespeare's England (1962)
• English Dramatic Form: A History of Its Development (1965)
• Shakespeare's Primitive Art (1965)
• The Tragic Pageant of 'Timon of Athens' (1966)
• That Infidel Place - a Short History of Girton College 1869-1969 (1969)
• Shakespeare the Craftsman (1969) Clark Lectures 1968
• Literature in Action: Studies in Continental and Commonwealth Society (1972)
• TS Eliot: the Making of 'The Waste Land' (1972)
• Malcolm Lowry: His art and Early Life - a study in transformation (1974)
• The Living Monument: Shakespeare and the Theater of His Time (1976)
• George Chapman (1977)
• Shakespeare: The Poet in His World (1978)
• In defense of Plato's love in modern literature (1979)
• John Webster, Citizen and Dramatist (1980)
• The Artist and Society in Shakespeare's England (1982) Collected Papers I
• Women and Literature 1779–1982 (1982) Collected Papers II
• Aspects of Dramatic Form in the English and Irish Renaissance (1983) Collected Papers III
• Muriel Bradbrook on Shakespeare (1984)
• Shakespeare in His Context: The Constellated Globe. (1989) Collected Papers IV

literature

• Leo Salingar: Muriel Clara Bradbook, 1909-1993 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 90 , 1996, pp. 297-316 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Academic curriculum vitae on the Girton College homepage ( Memento from March 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ MC Bradbrook, "That infidel place": a short history of Girton College, 1869-1969 (Chatto & Windus, London, 1969). ISBN 0-7011-1344-8
3. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 8, 2020 . 

Web links

• MC Bradbrook, 84, Shakespeare Scholar , Obituary, The New York Times, June 21, 1993. [1]
• Official website of Girton College, University of Cambridge. [2]
• Portrait by Mayotte Magnus, August 1976. National Portrait Gallery, London .