Anne Barton (previously Righter, born Barbara Ann Roesen; 9 May 1933 − 11 November 2013) was a renowned American-English scholar and Shakespearean critic.
Anne Barton | |
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Born | Barbara Ann Roesen 9 May 1933 |
Died | 11 November 2013 | (aged 80)
Other names | Anne Righter |
Alma mater | Bryn Mawr College Girton College, Cambridge |
Occupation | Shakespearean critic |
Years active | 1953–2005 |
Spouses |
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Born in Scarsdale, New York, the only child of Oscar and Blanche (née Williams) Roesen, Barton attended Bryn Mawr College, studying Renaissance literature with A. C. Sprague. In 1953, her senior essay on Love's Labor's Lost was published in the Shakespeare Quarterly, (the first undergraduate submission accepted by the journal). She then attended Girton College, Cambridge, completing her doctoral thesis in 1960 under M. C. Bradbrook. Barton's doctoral work was published in 1962 as Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play. Married in 1957 to William Righter, she returned to the U.S. and taught briefly at Ithaca College. Divorced in 1960, Barton returned to the U.K. and became Lady Carlisle Research Fellow at Girton; she took up a teaching fellowship there in 1962 and was appointed Director of Studies in English in 1963 (while also holding a University Lectureship in the Faculty of English). In 1969, she married theatre director John Barton, the co-founder with Sir Peter Hall of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Barton held a series of major academic appointments: From 1972 to 1974, she was Hildred Carlile Professor in English at Bedford College, London. The first female Fellow at New College, Oxford (1974-1984), she returned to Cambridge in 1984 as Grace 2 Professor of English, becoming a Fellow of Trinity College in 1986.[1][2]
Anne Barton died on 11 November 2013, aged 80, in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom.[3] She was survived by her husband of nearly 45 years, theatre director John Barton.[4]
Anne Barton portrait by James Lloyd, commissioned by New College, Oxford (Bridgeman Art Library)