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The marginalia of Edward de Vere's Geneva Bible: Providential discovery, literary reasoning, and historical consequence
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes the findings of a ten year study of the 1568–70 Geneva Bible originally owned and annotated by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604), and now owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. (Folger shelf mark 1427). This is the first and—presently—only dissertation in literary studies which pursues with open respect the heretical and thesis of John Thomas Looney (1920), B. M. Ward (1928), Charlton Ogburn Jr. (1984) and other “amateur” scholars, which postulates de Vere as the literary mind behind the popular nom de plume “William Shakespeare.” The dissertation reviews a selection of the many credible supports for this theory and then considers confirmatory evidence from the annotations of the de Vere Bible, demonstrating the coherence of life, literary preceden, and art, which is the inevitable consequence of the theory. Appendices offer detailed paleographical analysis, review the history of the authorship question, consider the chronology of the Shakespearean canon, and refute the claim of some critics that the alleged connections between the de Vere Bible and “Shakespeare” are “random.”
Subject Area
Comparative literature|British and Irish literature
Recommended Citation
Stritmatter, Roger A, "The marginalia of Edward de Vere's Geneva Bible: Providential discovery, literary reasoning, and historical consequence" (2001). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI3001149.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3001149