Alan B. Farmer

Pronouns

He/him/his

My research focuses on Shakespeare and early modern drama, the history of the book, England in the 1630s, seventeenth-century news and religious politics.

I have published articles on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, early modern printed news, and the early modern English book trade. With Adam Zucker, I co-edited Localizing Caroline Drama: Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stage, 1625-1642 (Palgrave, 2006). And with Zachary Lesser, I co-created DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks, an online searchable database of all printed plays from the early sixteenth century to 1660.

I am currently working on two book projects: a study of playbooks, newsbooks, and the politics of the Thirty Years' War in early modern England, and with Zachary Lesser a revisionist study of print popularity, entitled Print, Plays, and Popularity in Shakespeare's England.

Selected Publications

• “Playbooks and the Question of Ephemerality.” The Book as History, The Book as History: New Intersections of the Material Text. Ed. Heidi Brayman, Jesse M. Lander, and Zachary Lesser. New Haven: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, 2016. 87–125.
• “Shakespeare as Leading Playwright in Print, 1598–1608/9.” Shakespeare and Textual Studies. Ed. Margaret Jane Kidnie and Sonia Massai. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. 87–104.
• “What Is Print Popularity? A Map of the Elizabethan Book Trade.” The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England. Ed. Andy Kesson and Emma Smith. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. 19–54.
• “John Norton and the Politics of History Plays in Caroline England.” Shakespeare’s Stationers: New Essays in Cultural Bibliography. Ed. Marta Straznicky. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2013. 147–76.
• DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks. Ed. Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser. Created 2007.