Ronald Brunlees McKerrow

Ronald Brunlees McKerrow ( December 12, 1872 - January 20, 1940 ) was an English book scholar and Shakespeare scholar .

life and work

McKerrow was born in Putney . His father Alexander McKerrow was a civil engineer, his mother Mary Jane Brunlees was the daughter of Sir James Brunlees , then President of the Institution of Civil Engineers . He died in Picket Piece ( Wendover , Buckinghamshire ) and is buried there. His estate is kept in the Trinity College library.

Academic resume

He attended Harrow School , King's College London and Trinity College, Cambridge . From 1897 to 1900 he taught English in Tokyo . On his return to London in 1908 he became director of the Sidgwick and Jackson publishing house . In 1911 he received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. In 1912 he became general secretary of the Bibliographical Society together with Alfred W. Pollard . Society became the center of his scientific activity. During the First World War he taught in the English Language Department at King's College. In 1925 he founded Review of English Studies and remained its editor until his death. From 1934 to 1937 he edited The Library , the journal of the Bibliographical Society.

Scientific activity

McKerrow's academic work focused on three areas.

• He dealt with early English drama, particularly the work of Thomas Nashe and Shakespeare . He was one of the founders of the Malone Society .
• He researched the history of the English book trade in the early modern period and made significant contributions to it: Printers 'and Publishers' Devices in England and Scotland, 1485–1640 (1913) and Title-Page Borders used in England and Scotland, 1485–1640 (together with FS Ferguson ) (1932). In the work he edited by the "Bibliographical Society" Dictionaries of the printers and booksellers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland, 1557–1775 (1910), he wrote the volume for the period from 1557 to 1640.
• He also dealt with the theory and practice of historical descriptive bibliography and textual criticism (the history of transmission or traditional criticism of texts, with the aim of clarifying the causes of text variants ). He wrote An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927), which, along with Philip Gaskell 's New Introduction to Bibliography , (1972), is a standard work to this day. His contribution Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare (1939) was intended as an introduction to a critical edition of Shakespeare's works and was not completed.

Together with Alfred W. Pollard and WW Greg , RB McKerrow was one of the three most important representatives of English book studies in the first half of the 20th century. His Introduction to Bibliography. is considered to be pioneering work in the field of analytical bibliography.

Honors

McKerrow received an honorary doctorate from the University of Leuven in 1927 . In 1928 he was at Cambridge University's Sandars Reader in Bibliography. The following year he received the Gold Medal from the Bibliographical Society. In 1932 he was made a Fellow of the British Academy .

Selected publications

• edition of Thomas Nashe , The Works of Thomas Nashe. Edited from the original texts , London: AH Bullen, 1904
• edition of Thomas Dekker , The gull's horn-book , London: De la More Press, 1904.
• edition of Barnabe Barnes , The Divils Charter: a Tragædie conteining the Life and Death of Pope Alexander the sixt ... , Louvain, 1904.
• A Dictionary of printers and booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of foreign printers of English books 1557-1640. , London, 1910 (ed., For the Bibliographical Society); reprinted in Dictionaries of the printers and booksellers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland, 1557-1775 (1977).
• Printers '& Publishers' Devices in England & Scotland 1485-1640 . London: Printed for the Bibliographical Society at the Chiswick Press, 1913. on-line digitized version
• Title-page Borders used in England & Scotland, 1485-1640 , London, 1932 (with FS Ferguson).
• An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1927. (reprint, with an introduction by David McKitterick , Oak Knoll Press, 1995).
• Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare: A study in editorial method. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1939.
• Ronald Brunlees McKerrow: A Selection of His Essays. Ed. John Phillip Immroth. The Great Bibliographers Series, No. 1. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1974.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ David McKitterick, 'Introduction', in: An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927, reprint 1994)
2. ^ WW Greg, 'McKerrow, Ronald Brunlees (1872-1940)', rev. John V. Richardson Jr., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 accessed 14 Sept 2009
3. ^ Cambridge University Archives
4. ↑ ^{a b c} G.B. Harrison, Review of English Studies , xvi, no.63, July 1940, pp. 257-61.
5. ^ John Jowett: Shakespeare and Text. OUP 2007. p. 219.
6. ^ Article "McKerrow, Ronald Brunless" by Tom Matheson in: Dobson, Oxford Companion. P. 275.
7. ↑ Sandars Reader in Bibliography: 1928 RB McKerrow: The relationship of English printed books to authors' manuscripts in the 16th and 17th centuries. ( Memento of the original from October 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ Gold Medalists of The Bibliographical Society ( Memento of the original from January 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.