Dr Hannah Crawforth

Biography

I am a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature in the English Department at King’s College London, where I have been since receiving my PhD from Princeton in 2009. I am a founding member of the London Shakespeare Centre.

My work centres largely on poetry and poetics, with a particular focus on historically-informed close reading, extending to the histories of individual words, literary forms and genres.

My first monograph, Etymology and the Invention of English in Early Modern Literature, was published by Cambridge in 2013. The book considers the way that the birth of lexicography, linguistics and Anglo-Saxon studies suddenly opened up a new kind of allusivity for early modern writers, who began to draw upon the past lives of their words to underpin the famed wordplay of their work. It contains chapters on Spenser, Jonson, Donne and Milton.

I have also co-authored Shakespeare in London, published by Arden (Bloomsbury). Based on a course I have taught here at King’s, the book takes readers on an imaginary journey through Shakespeare’s city, exploring connections between the language of his plays and the particular time and place in which they were written.

I am writing a book on the early modern reception of Euripides. 

Research Interests

• Early Modern English literature and culture
• Poetics
• Greek tragedy
• Milton
• The Sonnet
• The poetics of difficulty

I would welcome expressions of interest from students considering a PhD on topics including Milton, early modern poetry and prose, Shakespeare and the city, early modern literature and linguistics, antiquarianism, Renaissance rhetoric, early modern classical reception and family politics in early modern England.

For more details, please see my full research profile.

Teaching

I teach on a variety of modules across all years of our degree, including PGT. My teaching reflects my research and current courses include Reading Paradise Lost (third-year) and Family Politics in Early Modern England (MA). I have taught on the ‘Shakespeare in London’ (third-year), Early Modern Literary Cultures (first-year), Renaissance Wordplay (second-year), Working with Early Modern Literary Texts (MA), and others. I am a co-convenor of the MA in Early Modern Literature: Text and Transmission, co-taught with the British Library.

Expertise and Public Engagement

As part of the Shakespeare400 season I co-edited a collection of poems by contemporary writers responding to Shakespeare, On Shakespeare's Sonnets: A Poets' Celebration (Arden Bloomsbury, 2016).

I was co-curator of 'By Me, William Shakespeare...', an exhibition of documents relating to his life and works from The National Archives, held in the Inigo Rooms at Somerset House.

I give regular pre-performance talks on Shakespeare and other early modern authors, as well as media appearances on topics relating to my research.