Sir W. W. Greg (Sir Walter Wilson Greg) Biography

British bibliographer, editor, and literary historian, born in Wimbledon, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1900 he completed his first work of bibliography, a finding list of plays written before 1643 and published before 1700. His unrivalled expertise in Elizabethan palaeography enabled him to produce his editions of Henslowe's Diary (1904) and Papers (1908). He also worked extensively with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscripts as general editor for the Malone Society; English Literary Autographs: 1550–1650 (1925–32), an edition of facsimiles and transcripts of documents, remains a primary tool for identifying the hands of various playwrights and scriveners. He is best known for A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration (four volumes, 1939–59), a work of great significance in the development of modern bibliographical studies. His numerous other publications include The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare (1942) and his widely admired dual-text edition of Marlowe's ‘Doctor Faustus’, 1604–1616 (1950).