Karen Britland

Research Interests

Early modern women’s religious writing; early modern Europe and its religious conflicts; magic and alchemy; early modern drama and performance; Shakespeare

Biography

I have just completed a book about clandestine writing in the English Revolution (forthcoming with Oxford University Press) and have published articles and given talks about cipher and invisible inks. I am also extremely interested in early modern women’s writing and have recently published work on the playwright Aphra Behn and the poet Hester Pulter. I am a general editor for the Revels Plays series and have edited a number of early modern texts, including John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. I am currently editing Shakespeare’s Richard II for the Arden Shakespeare series and researching a new monograph about spirituality and magic in the early modern period.

Recent Publications

Journal Articles

“‘A poor gentlewoman that cannot take mercenary courses for her bread’: Aphra Behn’s Sister and the Influence of Colonialism in Late Seventeenth-Century London,” The Seventeenth Century, 38.1 (2023), 131-53 (published online 14 November 2022): https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2022.2136844

“The Queer Poetics of Hester Pulter’s Poem, ‘Of A Young Lady At Oxford,’” Women’s Writing, 29.3 (2022), 382-401 (published online 31 August 2021): https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2021.1971230

“Aphra Behn’s First Marriage?” The Seventeenth Century, 36.1 (2021), 33-53 (published online 4 December 2019): https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2019.1693420

“Conspiring with ‘friends’: Hester Pulter’s Poetry and the Stanley Family at Cumberlow Green,” Review of English Studies, 69.292 (November 2018), 832-54

Book Chapters

“In the Hollow of His Wooden Leg: the Transportation of Civil War Materials, 1642-9,” in Insolent Proceedings: Rethinking Public Politics in the English Revolution, ed. Peter Lake and Jason Peacey (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), 88-106

“A Ring of Roses: Henrietta Maria, Pierre de Bérulle, and the Plague of 1625-1626,” in The Wedding of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, 1625: Celebrations and Controversy, ed. Marie-Claude Canova-Green and Sara Wolfson (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2020), 85-104

“‘What I Write I Do Not See’: Reading and Writing With Invisible Ink,” in A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers, ed. Katherine Ellison and Susan Kim (New York: Routledge, 2018), 208-22

Editions

John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1613) (London: Bloomsbury [New Mermaids], 2021)

Henry V: Continuum Renaissance Drama, ed. Karen Britland and Line Cottegnies (London: Bloomsbury, 2019)

John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan (1605) (London: Bloomsbury [Arden Early Modern Drama], 2018)

Issue of a Journal

Profane Shakespeare: Perfection, Pollution, and the Truth of Performance, Special Edition of the peer-reviewed journal, Etudes Epistémè, 33 (2018), edited by Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise, Line Cottegnies, and Karen Britland

Forthcoming Publications

Monograph: Women Writing in a Time of War, 1642–1689 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, c. 2025)

Book chapter: “‘Tel est le souffle des rois’: détrôner Richard dans Richard II” in Le Corps du monarque en scène. Le théâtre de la monarchie dans l’Europe de la première modernité, ed. Line Cottegnies and Anne Teulade (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Midi, c. 2024/5)

Edition: William Shakespeare’s Richard II (London: Bloomsbury [Arden Shakespeare, Fourth Series], c. 2027)