POTTER, Lois 1941-

PERSONAL: Born February 20, 1941, in Oakland, CA; daughter of George Vernon (a physician) and Lois (Dorais) Potter. Education: Sorbonne, University of Paris, diploma, 1957; Bryn Mawr College, B.A., 1961; Girton College, Cambridge, Ph.D., 1965. Politics: "Vague." Hobbies and other interests: Attending theater and opera, travel, cats.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716-2537.

CAREER: University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, assistant lecturer in English, 1964-66; University of Leicester, Leicester, England, lecturer, 1966-79, senior lecturer, 1979-89, reader in English, 1989-91; University of Delaware, Newark, Ned B. Allen Professor, 1991—. Broadcaster of drama reviews and other material on local radio station.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, Shakespeare Association of America (member of board of trustees, 1999), Malone Society (honorary secretary), Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society, Renaissance English Text Society (member of council, 1997), Society for Theatre Research (England).

AWARDS, HONORS: Woodrow Wilson fellowship, 1961; Marshall scholarship, Cambridge University, 1961-64.

WRITINGS:

A Preface to Milton, Scribner (New York, NY), 1971.

Twelfth Night: Text and Performance, Macmillan (London, England), 1984.

Othello (study of the play in performance), Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 2002.

Author of introduction to The Dramatic and Poetical Works of the Late Lieutenant General J. Burgoyne: A Facsimile Reproduction, Scholars' Facsimilies and Reprints, 1977. Also author and director of documentary programs for local radio and university theater broadcasts. Contributor to Durham University Journal, Shakespeare Survey, and Times Educational Supplement.

EDITOR

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1976.

(General editor) The Revels History of Drama, Methuen (London, England), Volume 1, 1981, (and contributor) Volume 4, 1983.

Francis Osborne, The True Tragicomedy (a formerly anonymous play manuscript from c. 1655), Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1983.

Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641-1660, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Routledge (New York, NY), 1996.

(And contributor) Playing Robin Hood: The Legend as Performance in Five Centuries, University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1998.

(With Arthur F. Kinney, and contributor) Shakespeare, Text, and Theater: Essays in Honor of Jay L. Halio, University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS: Lois Potter once told CA: "What I am proudest of, in an otherwise rather conventional academic career, is that I have sometimes managed to combine the creative and the scholarly. For example, in 1976 I wrote a musical documentary about the American Revolution from the point of view of General Burgoyne, and also contributed a scholarly introduction to a reprint of Burgoyne's plays and poems, published in 1977 in the 'Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints' series; in 1981 I burrowed in the University Archives in order to write a dramatic documentary for Leicester's Jubilee year, which was broadcast with a cast of academics, students, and administrators. Attending courses on university teaching methods (especially DUET—Development of University English Teaching—at the University of East Anglia) made me much more aware of the possibilities for using my own and the students' creativity in teaching. Living in England but maintaining contacts with U.S. academic life was also a stimulus: it created the sense of uncertainty and restlessness which, for me, seems to be a precondition of effective thinking."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

British Book News, July, 1985, review of Twelfth Night: Text and Performance, p. 435.

Comparative Drama, spring-summer, 2002, John R. Ford, review of Shakespeare, Text, and Theater: Essays in Honor of Jay L. Halio, p. 244.

Criticism, fall, 1991, review of Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641-1660, p. 547.

English Historical Review, January, 1993, Richard Ollard, review of Secret Rites and Secret Writing, p. 197.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, January, 1992, review of Secret Rites and Secret Writing, p. 134.

Libraries and Culture, summer, 1992, review of Secret Rites and Secret Writing, p. 332.

Prolepsis: Tübingen Review of English Studies, December 20, 2000, William Fitzhenry, review of Playing Robin Hood: The Legend as Performance in Five Centuries.

Renaissance Quarterly, summer, 1991, review of Secret Rites and Secret Writing, p. 381; spring, 1999, review of Playing Robin Hood, p. 288.

Review of English Studies, May, 1991, review of Secret Rites and Secret Writing, p. 261.

Seventeenth-Century News, fall, 1991, review of Secret Rites and Secret Writing, p. 51.

Shakespeare Newsletter, spring-summer, 2001, Rachel Wifall, review of Shakespeare, Text, and Theater, p. 31.

Shakespeare Quarterly, spring, 1987, review of Twelfth Night, p. 111; summer, 2001, review of Shakespeare, Text, and Theater, p. 300.

Times Educational Supplement, May 3, 1985, review of Twelfth Night, p. 70.

Times Literary Supplement, November 19, 1982; January 3, 1986, review of Twelfth Night, p. 19; January 12, 1990, review of Secret Rites and Secret Writing, p. 42; October 25, 2002, Jonathan Bate, review of Othello, p. 13.*