Shakespeare's 'Lady Editors'

The basic history of the Shakespearean editorial tradition is familiar and well-established. For nearly three centuries men most of them white and financially privileged ensconced themselves in private and hard-to-access libraries hammering out ''their'' versions of Shakespeare''s text. They produced enormous learnd tomes: monuments to their author''s greatness and their own reputations. What if this is not the whole story? A bold revisionist and alternative version of Shakespearean editorial history this book recovers the lives and labours of almost seventy women editors. It challenges the received wisdom that when it came to Shakespeare the editorial profession was entirely male-dominated until the late twentieth century. In doing so it demonstrates that taking these women''s work seriously can transform our understanding of the history of editing of the nature of editing as an enterprise and of how we read Shakespeare in history.