Berry, Edward I. 1940–

PERSONAL: Born November 30, 1940, in Camden, NJ; son of Edward Irwin (a lawyer) and Abigail (Steadman) Berry; married Margaret Eisenhardt (an artist), August 26, 1961; children: David, Michelle. Education: Wesleyan University, A.B., 1962; University of California, Berkeley, M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3070 STN CSC, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3W1, Canada. E-mail—eberry@uvic.ca.

CAREER: Educator and writer. Secondary teacher, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1962–64; University of Connecticut, Storrs, assistant professor of English, 1969–70; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, assistant professor of English, 1970–75; University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, professor of English, 1975–, chair of department, 1982–85, dean of humanities, 1987–92; lecturer and workshop leader in programs on judicial writing throughout Canada, 1981–; Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China, teacher, 1987. Trustee, Shakespeare Association of America, 1990–93; faculty representative, University of Victoria Board of Governors, 1996–2002; member of advisory council, Minister of Advanced Education, Province of British Columbia, 2004–05.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright fellowship, 1968–69; National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellowship, 1973; University of Victoria Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching.

WRITINGS:

Patterns of Decay: Shakespeare's Early Histories, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 1975.

Shakespeare's Comic Rites, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1984.

(Editor, with Linda Woodbridge) True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and Anti-Ritual in Shakespeare and His Age, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1992.

The Making of Sir Philip Sidney, University of Toronto Press (Buffalo, NY), 1998.

Shakespeare and the Hunt: A Cultural and Social Study, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Writing Reasons: A Handbook for Judges, E-M Press (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), 2001.

Contributor to numerous periodicals, including Shakespeare Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS: Edward I. Berry's academic interests include Renaissance literature and William Shakespeare, about whom he has written or edited several books. For example, he is the editor with Linda Wood-bridge of True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and Anti-Ritual in Shakespeare and His Age. The volume contains essays from various perspectives focusing on Shakespeare's plays and the times in which he lived. Catherine M. Shaw, writing in Theatre Research International, noted that the editors have written "an excellent introduction to the history of and variety within ritual criticism."

In his Shakespeare and the Hunt: A Cultural and Social Study, Berry examines the culture surrounding hunting in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras of England and the metaphorical roles that hunting plays in some of Shakespeare's plays. "Berry admirably shows that we can only understand the recurring images of the hunt in Shakespeare's plays and poems if we understand the social world from which those images emerge," wrote Benedict S. Robinson in Renaissance Quarterly. Robinson went on to comment that he felt that Berry "is at his best with the comedies." Modern Language Review contributor Gillian Rudd further remarked that the author "gathers many details of hunting practice, and puts them to good use in his readings of texts."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Modern Language Review, January, 2003, Gillian Rudd, review of Shakespeare and the Hunt: A Cultural and Social Study, pp. 168-169.

Renaissance Quarterly, summer, 2003, Benedict S. Robinson, review of Shakespeare and the Hunt, p. 562.

Theatre Research International, autumn, 1993, Catherine M. Shaw, review of True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and Anti-Ritual in Shakespeare and His Age, p. 224.

Times Literary Supplement, February 22, 2002, Andrew Hadfield, review of Shakespeare and the Hunt, p. 8.

ONLINE

University of Victoria Web site, http://web.uvic.ca/ (April 17, 2006), biographical and career information on the author.