Emma Smith

Can confirm from personal experience that ‘I never write to critics’ is a direct lie.

I’ve done it!

John Kerrigan · No Illusions: Syntax of Slavery Slavery was accepted across most of the early modern world. No one wanted to be a slave, except when the alternative was...

‘By 1790, one in eight Liverpool households were dependent on the slave trade.’

John Kerrigan on Liverpool, the Atlantic slave trade and m. nourbeSe philip’s long poem 𝘡𝘰𝘯𝘨!

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Don’t argue with strangers… and 11 more rules to survive the information crisis Feeling overwhelmed by divisive opinions, endless rows and unreliable facts? Here’s how to weather the data storm

Extract from my new book in the Guardian today!

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams

Oxford Modern Languages is holding an online info session for graduate degrees - DPhil, MPhil, MSt in Modern Langs, or Yiddish, or Slavonic Langs, and new MSt in translation: November 19, 5-6 - pass on to students - register here events.teams.microsoft.com/event/e2549b...

There is still time to apply for one of our 50+ Visiting Fellowships @bodleian.ox.ac.uk for the 2026-27 academic year! A vibrant interdisciplinary research centre in the heart of one of the world’s great libraries!

I can say that I had the great privilege of reading this prepublication and I think it is the most important book in our field for years: informed, generous, poetic, generative. Do read it. Brava, Hester

A colour still from a film: a young man wearing a white singlet with black straps, his arms bare, is being carried on the shoulders of soldiers with bare heads, wearing grey greatcoats. HIs arms are outstretched and his head is hanging down. There are similarly dressed soldiers forming a guard of honour, with rifles in their hands.

A still from a film. A young man with blond hair and a moustache is lying with his eyes closed in a pale satin-lined coffin, set on snowy ground. He is wearing elaborate black military-style uniform and has a sword held in his hands.

A colour publicity image for a play. A young man with dark hair, wearing a black top with a colourful image of flowers on the front, is lying in what looks like a white-satin-lined coffin. His eyes are open and he is staring up. There are white gladioli lying on his torso and white gypsophila on the coffin. It's lit in blue and looks slightly surreal.

Fortinbras: no words... EXEUNT. FINIS. THE END.
www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/slo...
And so it ends... Branagh carried off, and in his coffin in the 1996 film; Andrew Scott in a publicity image for the Almeida production in 2017.

Senior Librarian role in Oxford👇 www.asc.ox.ac.uk/fellow-libra...

Painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo dated c 1566 It shows what is clearly a head and torso of a man but all constructed using books including a fanned open book representing his hair and two large books cleverly positioned to represent his upper and lower right arm. The lower book is bent across his body and has thon bookmarks hanging from it to represent the fingers on his hand

One for the bibliophiles out there

This painting was flagged up in a book I am reading atm (Portable Magic @oldfortunatus.bsky.social ) and whilst I'm pretty sure I have seen it before it hadn't really lodged in my memory

I give you Giuseppe Arcimboldo's c 1566 painting, The Librarian

Fountain Pen Day | Cult Pens Fountain Pen Day - in stock now for fast UK and worldwide shipping.

I probably shouldn't tell anyone this but apparently it's Fountain Pen Day on Friday and Cult Pens has 10% off all week to celebrate:
cultpens.com/collections/...

Perfect! It needs to be unscented!

Major in Africana Studies or any humanities course like English Literature! You could be mayor of New York City. You could do anything.

Paddleboarding witch, 1643.

Featured in Jon Crabb's essay "Woodcuts and Witches" about the witch craze of early modern Europe, and how the concurrent rise of the mass-produced woodcut helped forge the archetype of the broom-riding crone so familiar today publicdomainreview.org/essay/w...

The ’king’ & ‘queen’ travelled along the Thames on golden leopards, and ’Indian pages’ carried ingots of silver and gold. This spectacle exhibited stereotypes about the Americas, but also, perhaps, a knowledge of the longstanding metalworking traditions of peoples including the Incas and Muiscas.

On this day in 1611 — days before the first recorded performance of Shakespeare’s Tempest — the inauguration of a new Lord Mayor of London involved an elaborate pageant featuring English subjects dressed up as Indigenous Americans ‘from the rich and Golden Indian mines’. #goldenworld

A humanlike figure viewed from behind wears a skin and looks over his shoulder. The caption, in an angular, jazz-age font, reads, “Caliban Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration.”

Image: Program for The Tempest, Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration, New York, 1916. The cover shows Caliban. Program Collection, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC. 4/

Completely agree re Office vibe - and found him much too geeky-can’t-get-girlfriend rather than a bully

Agree, although felt the opening framing of the duke’s motives wasn’t carried through. What did you think of Angelo? Quite a lot of audience sympathy for him, I felt, when I saw it

Macbeth review – a terrifying lock-in with bloodied, boozed-up gangsters Daniel Raggett’s audacious RSC production sets the play in a Glaswegian pub full of thugs and has a Landlady Macbeth running the show

I saw one of the final previews @the-rsc.bsky.social at the weekend & concur; it made terrifying sense as a world, I LOVED what it did with the priest, the SPACE, & Lia Williams is astonishing. Whole run sold out, can we have a transfer as a little treat?
www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/o...

English Faculty/OWC Shakespeare Webinar: King Henry VIII In this free webinar, Professor Emma Smith will be discussing the new edition of King Henry VIII from Oxford World's Classics.

Our OWC/English Faculty #Shakespeare webinar series continues! Next up, Henry VIII on 3 Nov at 6pm.

Join @oldfortunatus.bsky.social and @laurajaynewright.bsky.social to explore the play & how we might approach it differently in the twenty-first century.

All welcome! FREE but registration required

Yes - have kept thinking about it ever since. Super interesting indeed

"Parking is such sweet sorrow"

Textile Shakespeare Buy Textile Shakespeare by Lees-Jeffries, Hester (ISBN: 9780198861133) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

I don't like linking to wretched Am*z*n but a sample of my book has just appeared (most of the introduction, it looks like, and the plates!) and, well, I hope you like it. Proper publication next month. EEEEEK.
www.amazon.co.uk/Textile-Shak...

How long can the C of E continue its privileges as the established church? www.reuters.com/world/uk/chu...

A close-up image of a handwritten note in a sixteenth-century book. The note reads: 'Spenser repor / teth otherwise / [o]f this Knight / [D]ialogue of Ire- / [la]nd / [p]. 76.

a tiny bit of good news is that we have secured funding to digitize john milton's copy of holinshed's CHRONICLES (1587).

the images will form part of MILTON'S LIBRARY, an open-access site featuring the 10 books positively identified as milton's w/ transcriptions/translations of his marginal notes.

I like the idea of Measure FM as. Shakespeare radio station …

Another collaborative play…. The RSC version really fascinatingly scripted by the director

It’s interesting for attribution studies to move beyond - why isn’t this apparently very good? Ah, phew, not Shakespeare…

It makes sense if we think GP less competent than early Shakespeare…