Muriel Bradbrook (Muriel Clara Bradbrook) Biography

British scholar and critic, born in Wallasey, Cheshire, educated at Girton College, Cambridge, where she taught throughout her career; in 1968 she became Mistress of the college, of which she produced a history entitled That Infidel Place (1969) to mark its centenary in 1969. She was best known for her contributions to Elizabethan and Shakespearian studies, which are highly regarded for her detailed knowledge of the social and cultural contexts of the period. Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy (1934), Shakespeare and Elizabethan Poetry (1951), The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (1955), The Rise of the Common Player (1962), Shakespeare the Craftsman (1969), and The Living Monument (1976) are the six volumes of her History of Elizabethan Drama, which were published together in 1979. Among her other publications are The School of Night (1936), a study of Elizabethan intellectual heterodoxy; Ibsen the Norwegian (1946); and Malcolm Lowry: His Art and Early Life (1974). The Collected Papers of Muriel Bradbrook, covering a wide variety of topics, appeared in four volumes between 1982 and 1989.