The Shakespearean Forest

Anne Barton was the author of Essays, Mainly Shakespearean (1994), Byron: Don Juan (1992), The Names of Comedy (1990), Ben Jonson, Dramatist (1984) and, (as Anne Righter), Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (1962), as well as many essays and introductions. In 2000, she retired as Professor of English at the University of Cambridge, where she was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; she had previously been a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Girton College, Cambridge, and was a Fellow of the British Academy. From the 1960s onwards, her work had a profound influence on the Royal Shakespeare Company and the performance and academic study of early modern drama more generally. Anne Barton died in 2013.

• Foreword Adrian Poole; Editor's note Hester Lees-Jeffries; Acknowledgements; 1. Into the woods; 2. Staging the forest; 3. The wild man in the forest; 4. 'Like the old Robin Hood of England'; 5. The forest and the city; 6. Let the forest judge; Afterword: Anne Barton (1933–2013) Peter Holland; Further reading; Index.

'While the book is primarily a testament to Barton's scholarly erudition and keen eye for both stage and page, the foreword (by Adrian Poole), editor's note (Hester Lees-Jeffries) and Holland's afterword make it also a moving testimony to the ideal of pedagogy which Anne Barton represented to those who knew her.' Elizabeth Scott-Baumann, The Times Literary Supplement