J. Dover Wilson (John Dover Wilson) Biography

British Shakespearian editor and scholar, born at Mortlake in Surrey, educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His early works included the contribution of two chapters to The Cambridge History of English Literature (edited by A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller, 13 volumes, 1907–16). After a period with the Board of Education, he was Professor of Education at King's College, London, from 1924 to 1935, when he became Regius Professor of English at the University of Edinburgh. In 1919 he was appointed Quiller-Couch's co-editor on the New Cambridge Shakespeare (1921–66). Quiller-Couch retired after the completion of the comedies, leaving Wilson as sole editor. His bibliographical methods were based on those established by his associate W. W. Greg. Other works by Wilson include The Essential Shakespeare (1932), a ‘biographical adventure’, The Manuscript of Shakespeare's ‘Hamlet’ (1934), What Happens in ‘Hamlet’ (1935), which had remarkable appeal to a general readership, and Shakespeare's Happy Comedies (1962). Milestones on the Dover Road, his autobiography, appeared in 1969.