Kenneth Muir

Who was Kenneth Muir?

Kenneth Arthur Muir was a literary scholar and author, prominent in the fields of Shakespeare studies and English Renaissance theatre. He served as King Alfred Professor of English Literature at Liverpool University from 1951 to 1974.

Muir edited volumes 19 through 33 of the Shakespeare Survey, and served as chairman of the International Shakespeare Association. He authored and edited a wide range of scholarly articles and books — primarily on Shakespeare and other Elizabethans, but also on various other subjects, including John Keats, Jean Racine, and Pedro Calderon de la Barca. He edited modern texts of many classic plays of the English Renaissance, including Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida, and Richard II. He also edited the collected poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt.

Muir is vulnerable to confusion with other authors with very similar names: John Kenneth Muir, Kenneth B. Muir, Kenneth R. Muir, and Kenneth W. Muir.