The complete works of Ben Jonson published for the first time in 60 years

A twenty-year project by Cambridge University Press to chart the life and works of Shakespeare's great contemporary, Ben Jonson, is complete.

The complete works of Ben Jonson have not been published since 1952, and now an international team of experts has created The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (7 Volume Set).

Jonson is best known as a playwright of comedies (Volpone, Every Man in his Humour, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair), which are still regularly performed. He was also a poet, prose writer, and author of Jacobean court masques.

The son of a bricklayer and a man of immense learning, Jonson was also a contemporary of Shakespeare. Much more is known about Jonson, however, because he prepared his own writings for publication, annotated them with marginal notes and produced a huge Folio in 1616.

 The Cambridge Edition contains Jonson's complete writings, uniquely arranged chronologically for the first time, providing a clear sense of the shape, scale and variety of his work.

The 7 volumes trace the development of Jonson's entire career, presenting in modernized format his 17 extant plays, his more than 30 court masques and entertainments, the three major poetic collections together with his miscellaneous poems and translations, 19 surviving letters, his *English Grammar*, and his commonplace book, *Discoveries* in which he speaks affectionately but not uncritically about his friend, William Shakespeare. The edition also includes a dramatic fragment, some recently discovered works by Jonson (an elegy, some songs, a hitherto 'lost' entertainment) along with accounts of other still-lost plays and entertainments, and an edition of Jonson's *Informations to William Drummond of Hawthornden*, a unique record of his life, gossip, and opinions dating from his time in Scotland.  All of these texts are accompanied by detailed introductions, commentary, collations, and accounts of the texts, informed by the most recent scholarship.  The edition is richly illustrated with portraits, maps, and costume and set designs.

"Jonson had one of the busiest and most impactful careers of any English Renaissance writer. By presenting his works in modern spelling and chronological sequence, the Cambridge Edition lets their wonderful richness and complexity shine through, making him fully accessible again to modern readers and performers" - Martin Butler, Co-Editor

 ENDS

Notes for Editors:

For further information, contact Chris Burrows, Publicity Executive, on +44 (0)1223 326274, or email cburrows@cambridge.org  

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson 7 Volume Set

7 Hardback books, each approx 800 pages

ISBN: 9780521782463

Published: 12 July, 2012

On offer at £599.00 until 1 August 2012, Full price: £650

Each work is accompanied by insightful commentary and an introduction, with modern spelling of the texts and thorough footnotes. They are also illustrated with portraits, maps, costume and set designs.

About the Editors:

David Bevington is the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1967. He is senior editor of the recently published Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama (2002). With Peter Holbrook he has edited a collection of essays on The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge University Press, 1998).  He has edited The Complete Works of Shakespeare for Pearson/Longman and Medieval Drama for Houghton Mifflin.

Martin Butler is Professor of English Renaissance Drama at the University of Leeds. He has been a research fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, The Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC, and the Leverhulme Trust. He is the author of Theatre and Crisis 1632-1642 (1984), Ben Jonson's Volpone, A Critical Study (1987), The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (2008), and numerous essays on 17th-century literature. He has edited Re-Presenting Ben Jonson: Text, History, Performance (1999); Cymbeline (for the New Cambridge Shakespeare series), and The Tempest (for the Penguin Shakespeare). 

Ian Donaldson is Emeritus professor of the Australian National University and Honorary Professional Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has taught at the ANU and the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Cambridge and was founding Director of the ANU's Humanities Research Centre and Cambridge's Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH). His publications include, The World Upside Down: Comedy From Jonson to Fielding (1970), The Rapes of Lucretia (1982), Jonson's Magic Houses (1997), several editions of Jonson's poetry and other writings (1975, 1985, 1995) and most recently, Ben Jonson: A Life (Oxford, 2011).

Contents

1. Contributors
2. Alphabetical listing of the contents
3. Index of titles and first lines of the poems
4. Maps and illustrations
5. Acknowledgements
6. General introduction The General Editors
7. Life of Ben Jonson Ian Donaldson
8. Actors, companies, and playhouses David Bevington
9. The Court Masque Martin Butler
10. Masquers and Tilters Martin Butler
11. The printing and publishing of Ben Jonson's works David L. Gants and Tom Lockwood
12. Abbreviations and common forms of citation
13. Sigla used in the collations
14. The complete works in seven volumes
15. Bibliography Eugene Giddens, Karen Britland, Peter Culhane and Christopher Burlinson.

About Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Dedicated to excellence, its purpose is to further the University's objective of advancing knowledge, education, learning, and research.

Its extensive peer-reviewed publishing lists comprise 45,000 titles covering academic research, professional development, over 300 research journals, school-level education, English language teaching and bible publishing.

Playing a leading role in today's international market place, Cambridge University Press has more than 50 offices around the globe, and it distributes its products to nearly every country in the world.

For more information, go to: www.cambridge.org