Ian Donaldson
Honorary Professorial Fellow, English
Biography
Ian Donaldson is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He is President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, a Fellow of the British Academy, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
He has taught at the University of Melbourne (Senior Tutor in English, 1958) and Oxford University (tutorial Fellow in English at Wadham College, 1962-9, CUF Lecturer in English, 1964-9), at the Australian National University, Canberra (Professor of English, 1969-91, Head of Department, 1970-3), at Edinburgh University (Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, 1991-5, Head of Department, 1992-4), and Cambridge University (Grace 1 Professor of English, 1995-2002; Fellow of King's College, 1995-2005).
Ian was founding Director of the ANU's Humanities Research Centre from 1974 to 1990, and directed the Centre again from 2004 to 2007. He convened the King's College Cambridge Research Centre from 1997 to 2000, and was founding Director of Cambridge University's Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) from 2001 to 2003. He has held visiting appointments at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1967-8), Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (1985), Cornell University (1988), and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC (1988).
His books include The World Upside-Down: Comedy From Jonson to Fielding (1970), Ben Jonson Poems (1975), The Rapes of Lucretia: A Myth and its Transformations (1982), Jonson's Magic Houses: Essays in Interpretation (1997), as well as number of edited volumes, and about seventy articles and chapters in books. He has been Consultant Editor for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, with responsibility for all literary entries, 1500-1779.
He is General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, due for publication by Cambridge University Press in 25 volumes (print and electronic format) in 2008. He is completing a Life of Ben Jonson for Oxford University Press, and working on a cultural history of touching and its taboos, provisionally entitled Noli me tangere.
Publications
The World Upside-Down: Comedy From Jonson to Fielding, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1970, 211 pp. Second edition, paperback, 1974
Ben Jonson: Poems, edited with an introduction and notes, Oxford University Press, London, New York, Toronto, 1975. Oxford Standard Authors and Oxford Paperback. 414 pp.
The Rapes of Lucretia: A Myth and its Transformations, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1982, 203 pp.
Jonson and Shakespeare, edited with an introduction, Macmillan Press, HRC/Macmillan series, 1983, 221 pp.
Australia and the European Imagination, edited with an introduction, Humanities Research Centre, Canberra, 1982
Transformations in Modern European Drama, edited with an introduction, Macmillan Press, London, HRC/Macmillan series, 1983, 181 pp.
Seeing the First Australians, edited with Tamsin Donaldson, with an introduction, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1985, 216 pp.
Ben Jonson, edited with an introduction and notes, The Oxford Authors (general editor, Frank Kermode), Oxford and New York, 1985, 787 pp. Second edition 1993. [Contains: Volpone, The Alchemist, the complete poems, Discoveries, Conversations with Drummond.]
Shaping Lives: Reflections on Biography, edited with Peter Read and James Walter, with an introduction, Humanities Research Centre, Canberra, 1992, 288 pp.
Ben Jonson, edited with introduction and notes, Oxford Poetry Library, Oxford, 1995, 224 pp.
Jonson's Magic Houses: Essays in Interpretation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, 240 pp.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 60 volumes, print and electronic format, 2004: Consultant Editor for literary entries 1500-1779.
The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, Cambridge University Press, 25 volumes, print and electronic format, forthcoming 2008 (in press, now at proof stage), General Editor, with David Bevington and Martin Butler. (Oversight of the entire edition, with particular responsibility for Life, Letters, Lost Plays, Informations to Drummond.)
Books in progress
Ben Jonson: A Life. Commissioned for publication by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. (About 500 pp.)
Noli me tangere: Touching and its Taboos
Short monographs
Jonson's Walk to Scotland, inaugural lecture, University of Edinburgh, Quadriga, Edinburgh, 1993, 24 pp.
The Death of the Author and the Lives of the Poets, David Fleeman Memorial Lecture 1994, Johnson Society of Australia, 1994, 18 pp.
Guidelines for the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, with David Bevington and Martin Butler, Cambridge University Press, 1998, 148 pp., revised edition, 2001, 168 pp.
Articles and chapters in books
New Papers of Henry Holland and R. B. Sheridan: (i) Holland's Drury Lane, 1794, Theatre Notebook, xvi, 3, Spring 1962, 90-6
New Papers of Henry Holland and R. B. Sheridan : (ii) The Hyde Park Corner Operas and the Dormant Paten, Theatre Notebook, xvi, 4, Summer 1962, 117-24
'Return to Abyssinia', The Critical Forum, Essays in Criticism, xiv, 2, April 1964, 210-14
'L. C. Knights and Soil Erosion', The Oxford Review, 1, Hilary 1966, 57-63
'A Martyr's Resolution: Jonson's Epicoene', The Review of English Studies, n.s. xvii, 69, February 1967, 1-15. Reprinted in The World Upside-Down, 1970, and in Ben Jonson's Plays and Masques, ed. Robert M. Adams, Norton Critical Edition, New York and London, 1979, 427-40
'Shakespeare Observed', The Oxford Review, 5, Trinity 1967, 18-27
'Tables Turned: The Plain Dealer', Essays in Criticism, xvii, 74, July 1967, 304-21. Reprinted in The World Upside-Down, 1970
'Jonson's Tortoise', The Review of English Studies, n.s. xix, 74, May 1968, 162-6. Reprinted in Volpone: A Casebook, ed. Jonas A. Barish, Macmillan & Co., London, 1972, 189-94
'The Clockwork Novel: Three Notes on an Eighteenth-Century Analogy', The Review of English Studies, n.s. xxi, 81, February 1970, 14-22
'Ben Jonson', in English Drama to 1710, ed. C. B. Ricks, vol. 3 of the Sphere History of Literature in the English Language, 1971, 278-305. Second edition revised, 1987.
'Drama from 1710 to 1780', in Dryden to Johnson, ed. R. H. Lonsdale, vol. 4 of the Sphere History of Literature in the English Language, 1971, 278-305. Second edition revised, 1986.
'Volpone: Quick and Dead', Essays in Criticism, xxi, 2, April 1971, 121-34
'Language, Noise, and Nonsense: The Alchemist', in Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, ed. Earl Miner, University of California Press, 1971, 69-82. Reprinted in 'Every Man In His Humour' and 'The Alchemist', ed. R. V. Holdsworth, Macmillan & Co., London, 1978, 206-19
'Damned by Analogies: Or, How to Get Rid of Ben Jonson', Gambit: International Theatre Review, 22, 1972, 38-46
'Cato in Tears: Stoical Guises of the Man of Feeling', in Studies in the Eighteenth Century, II, ed. R. F. Brissenden, ANU Press, Canberra, 1973, 377-95
'Jonson's Cary/ Morison Ode', in Studies in the Literary Imagination, vi, I, April 1973, 139-52, Special number on Ben Jonson. Reissued as monograph, 1985.
'High Life and Low Life: Fielding and the Uses of Inversion', in Henry Fielding: A Critical Anthology, ed. C. J. Rawson, Penguin Books, 1974 (reprinted from The World Upside-Down, 1970).
'Shakespeare's Serious Indecency', Essays in Criticism, xxiv, 1974, 363-7
'The Satirists' London', Essays in Criticism, xxiv, January 1975, 101-22. 25th anniversary number, in honour of F. W. Bateson.
'"A Double Capacity": The Beggar's Opera', in The Beggar's Opera: Twentieth-Century Interpretations, ed. Yvonne Noble, Prentice Hall, 1975, 65-80 (from The World Upside-Down). Reprinted also in Modern Essays in Eighteenth-Century Literature, ed. Leopold Damrosch, jun., Oxford University Press, New York, 1987.
'All's Well That Ends Well: Shakespeare's Play of Endings', Essays in Criticism, xxvii, 1977, 34-55
'Jonson and the Moralists', in Two Renaissance Mythmakers, ed. Alvin B. Kernan, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1977, 146-64
'The Ledger of the Lost-and-Stolen Office: Parody in Dramatic Comedy', Southern Review (Adelaide), xii, March 1980, 41-52; Special Issue on Parody. Translated into Japanese, 1989.
'Research and the Humanities', published by the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1980
'Fielding, Richardson, and the Ends of the Novel', Essays in Criticism, xxxii, 1982, 26-47
'A Foreign Field', in Symposium 'Professing Literature', The Times Literary Supplement, 10 December 1982
'Pope and Feeling', in Studies in the Eighteenth Century, V, ed. J. P. Hardy and J. C. Eade, Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 1983, 33-50
'Jonson and Anger', The Yearbook of English Studies, Special Number of Satire: Essays in Memory of Robert C. Elliott 1914-1981, 14, 1984, 56-71. Reprinted in English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, ed. C. J. Rawson, Blackwells, Oxford, 1984, 56-71
'Centres and Circumferences: Australian Studies and the European Perspective', in Australian and New Zealand Studies, ed. Patricia McLaren-Turner, British Library Occasional Papers, 4, London, 1985, 194-202
'Editing a "Standard" Text: Ben Jonson', in Editing Texts, ed. J. C. Eade, Humanities Research Centre, Canberra, 1985, 27-46
'Fathers and Sons: Jonson, Dryden, and Mac Flecknoe', Southern Review (Adelaide), xviii, November 1985, 314-27. Reprinted in Jonson's Magic Houses, 1997.
'Jonson's Magic Houses', Essays and Studies, 1986, 39-61. Reprinted as title-essay in Jonson's Magic Houses, 1997, and in Ben Jonson's Plays and Masques, ed. Richard Harp, Norton Critical Edition, 2001.
'Samuel Johnson and the Art of Observation', ELH: A Journal of English Literary History, 53, 1986, 779-99
'The Argument of "The Disabled Debauchee"', Modern Language Review, 82, 1987, 30-4
'Eucalyptic Visions', The Cambridge Review, December 1987, 152-3
'Ben Jonson and the Story of Charis', Sydney Studies in English, 13, 1987-8, 3-20. Reprinted in Jonson's Magic Houses, 1997.
'Concealing and Revealing: Pope's Epistle to Doctor Arbuthnot', The Yearbook of English Studies, 18, 1988, 181-99. Special number on Pope, Swift, and their Circle.
'The Arthur Boyd Australian Centre in Italy', in Understanding Italy: Language, Culture, Commerce: An Australian Perspective, ed. Camila Bettoni and Joseph Lo Bianco, Frederick May Foundation, Sydney, 1989, 226-31
'Research Without Books', The Age Monthly Review, April 1989
'Defining and Defending the Humanities', in The Relevance of the Humanities, ed. A. M. Gibbs, Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1990, 18-36
'The Future of Research in the Humanities', AUMLA, Australasian Universities Modern Language Association, May 1990, 1-19
'The Creation of the Arthur Boyd Australian Centre in Italy', in Australian Studies, 5, April 1991, 50-60
'Which Side is Out?: Relations with the Academy', in HRC Bulletin, March 1991 (from HRC Seminar, Working Outside the Academy).
'Gathering and Losing the Self: Ben Jonson and Biography', in Shaping Lives, ed. Ian Donaldson, James Walter, and Peter Read, HRC, Canberra, 1992, 1-20; reprinted in Jonson's Magic Houses, 1997.
'Volpone and the Ends of Comedy', Sydney Studies in English, 18. 1992-3, 48-71; reprinted (under the title
'Unknown Ends: Volpone') in Jonson's Magic Houses, 1997, and in Ben Jonson, ed. Richard Dutton, 2000, 118-35
'Research in the Antipodes', Cambridge Review, 113, June 1992, 60-3 (reprinted in HRC Bulletin, December 1992, 6-10).
'Clockwork Comedy: Time and The Alchemist', The Glasgow Review, 1, Spring 1993, 23-38, reprinted in Jonson's Magic Houses, 1997
'Politic Picklocks: Reading Jonson Historically', Sydney Studies in English, 19, 1993, 3-20; reprinted in Jonson's Magic Houses and in Literary Criticism from 1400 to 1800, vol. 100, ed. Tom Schoenberg, Gale Group, 2005
'A New Edition of Ben Jonson?', in The Ben Jonson Journal, 2, 1995, 223-32
'"Not of an Age": Jonson, Shakespeare, and the Verdicts of Posterity', in New Perspectives on Ben Jonson, ed. James Hirsh, Madison and London, 1997, 197-214, reprinted in Jonson's Magic Houses
'Jonson and the Tother Youth', in Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum, ed. R. B. Parker and Sheldon Zitner, Newark and London, 1996, 111-29, reprinted in Jonson's Magic Houses
'What Hope for the Humanities?', in Zukunftsaspektee der Geisteswissenschafen: Herausgegeben von Bernhard Fabian, Hildesheim, 1996, 41-62
'Marlowe, Jonson, and the Origins of Evil', in Comment le mal vient aux hommes, ed. Patricia Dorval, Societe Francaise Shakespeare, Paris, 1997, 11-26
'The Destruction of the Book', in Book History, 1, ed. Jonathan Rose and Ezra Greenspan, 1998, 1-10
'Misconstruing Everything: Julius Caesar and Sejanus', in Shakespeare Performed, ed. Grace Ioppolo, Newark and London, 2000, 88-107
'The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson', Ben Jonson Journal, 5, 1999, 257-70
'Ben Jonson', in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler (3,000 words), Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999
'Jonson's Poetry', in The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson, ed. Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 119-139
'Perishing and Surviving: The Poetry of Donne and Jonson', Essays in Criticism, 50th anniversary number, January 2000, 68-85
'Looking Sideways: Jonson, Shakespeare, and the Myths of Envy', Ben Jonson Journal, 8, 2001, 1-22; reprinted in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: New Directions in Biography, ed. Takashi Kozuka and J. R. Mulryne, Ashgate, London, 2006
'National Biography and the Arts of Memory: From Thomas Fuller to Colin Matthew', in Mapping Biography, ed. Peter France and William St Clair, Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2002, 67-82
'Collaboration in the Humanities', in Reconfiguring the Humanities, Symposium at the National Library of Australia, 12 September 2002, <http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/activities/30th/index.html>
'"The Fripperie of Wit": Jonson and Plagiarism', in Plagiarism in History: Renaissance to the Eighteenth Century, ed. Paulina Kewes, Palgrave, 2003, 119-33
'Collecting Ben Jonson', in The Culture of Collected Editions, ed. Andrew Nash, Palgrave, 2003, 19-31
'Ben Jonson', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, 30, 681-94
'Biographical Uncertainty', Critical Opinion, Essays in Criticism, 54, October 2004, 305-22
Introduction to Desert Gardens, in Australian Humanities Review, 36, July 2005, special issue co-edited with Libby Robin, <http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-July-2005/01Robin.html>
'Jonson and the Variant', in Varianten -- Variants -- Variantes, ed. Christa Jansohn and Bodo Plachta, Beihefte zu edition, Internationales Jahrbuch fur Editionswissenschaften, 22. Tuebingen: Max Niemeyer, 2006, 107-117
'Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography', ABR/ La Trobe University Lecture for 2006, Australian Book Review, November 2006, 23-9
'Syncrisis: The Figure of Contestation', in Renaissance Figures of Speech, ed. Sylvia Adamson, Gavin Alexander, and Katrin Ettenhuber, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 245-67
'"Slowly the Poison": William Empson', Profiles in World Literature and Ideas, Australian Book Review, September 2007, 38-41
'Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Invention of the Author', 2006 British Academy Shakespeare Lecture, in Proceedings of the British Academy, 151, 2007, 319-338
Reviews
In Essays in Criticism, The Review of English Studies, The Times Literary Supplement, Modern Language Review, The Yearbook of English Studies, The Oxford Magazine, Voices, Australian Book Review, New Statesman, etc. Theatre reviewer for The Guardian (London), 1962-9.
Personal tributes
Grahame Johnston: Preface to Grahame Johnston: A Tribute, HRC, 1978
Dame Joan Sutherland, Citation for an honorary degree, ANU, 1980
Barry Humphries: 'Early Snapshots' in Barry Humphries: Bepraisements on his Birthday, complied by Ken Thomson, Enitharmon Press, London, 1994, 25-30
Tony Tanner: Funeral address, in Tony Tanner 1935-1998, Critical Quarterly, 41, 2, Summer 1999, 12-13
Frank Kermode: 'Voyaging', in There are Kermodians: A Liber Amicorum for Frank Kermode, ed. Anthony Holden and Ursula Owen, 1999, 40-6
A. D. Hope: Obituary, The Independent (London), 17 July 2000
Christopher Ricks: Ricks's Dicta: or, Short Shrifts for Christopher, The Foundling Press, 2003
Iain McCalman: Preface to Festschrift for Iain McCalman, ed. Paul Pickering, forthcoming 2007
Editorial
Co-editor of Essays in Criticism, with F. W. Bateson and Christopher Ricks, 1965-9
Advisory board, The Oxford Review, 1966-9
Editorial Board, AUMLA, 1973-8
Reviews Editor, Southern Review (Adelaide), 1975-7
Editorial Board, Ben Jonson Journal, 1994-
Editorial Board, Australian Studies (Stirling), 1994-
Editorial Board, Humanities Research (Canberra), 2004-
Editorial Board, Parergon (Perth, WA), 1998-
Editor, King's College Research Centre Newsletter, 1997-2000
General Editor, HRC/ Macmillan series, 1979-89. Series comprises:
Michael Butler, The Plays of Max Frisch, 1985
Ian Donaldson, ed. Jonson and Shakespeare, 1983
Ian Donaldson, ed., Transformations in Modern European Drama, 1983
J. E. Flower, Literature and the Left in France, 1984
Oliver MacDonagh, W. F. Mandle, Pauric Travers, eds. Irish Culture and Nationalism, 1750-1950, 1983
Peter Norrish, New Tragedy and Comedy in France, 1954-70, 1989
General Editor, HRC/ Oxford University Press series, 1985-91. Series comprises:
F. W. Kent and Patricia Simons, eds., Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, 1987
Jean-Paul Descoeudres, ed., Greek Colonists and Native Populations, 1990
Beryl Rawson, Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome, 1991