Inside the cover of my book, you will find five black-and-white images. They are: A page from James Burgh’s Art of Speaking (1761), which shows how he marked up the passions to be found in a conversation between Shylock and Tubal. Two images showing Richard Steele’s attempts in 1775 to write down exactly how Hamlet’s…

I’m trying to think of where my book began, and realizing very swiftly the obvious truth that no book has a single point of origin. Better then to talk about a book’s beginnings, and this short post will discuss two of them, and from two very different points in time. The earlist beginning I can…

One of the greatest pleasures of producing a book has to be the opportunity of discovering how others respond to your ideas. Such pleasures begin long before the book is published, of course, with, in my case, so many coffees and conversations and conference papers. But the process of publication does give some particularly interesting…

I really like the cover of my book. I wish I knew the designer who put it together. I’d like to thank her or him for the way they lined up the foot of Garrick-as-Jaffeir so that it fits over the ‘f’ and the ‘o’ of ‘Performance; how they made the pedestal’s edge align with…

One of the most fascinating things about publishing my first book is to see how it has slowly made the journey from a bunch of files on my computer, to something that you can find in shops, libraries, webstores, and even in my hands. There’s a lot to say about the process, but this post…

I wasn’t quite sure what to call this post, and went for the enthusiastic title mainly because I’m still trying to persuade myself that this thing is going to come to pass. In fact, it’s going to come to pass quite imminently. My book’s profile on the CUP website announces publication in March 2021, which…