Member News: Faith Acker

SRC Member Faith Acker’s new book First Readers of Shakespeare’s Sonnets was recently released by Routledge. The book examines early readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets, drawing on book history, manuscript studies, and editorial theory to recover four lost critical approaches to the poems that in turn elucidate the interests of early readers in Shakespeare’s classical adaptations, political applicability, religious themes, and rhetorical skill.

Dr. Acker received her doctorate in Renaissance Literature from the University of St Andrews, and her additional work on the sonnets’ early readers appears in Canonising Shakespeare: Stationers and the Book Trade, 1640-1740 (eds. Depledge and Kirwan, 2017) and is forthcoming in Shakespeare Quarterly.