Sir Stanley Wells CBE - English Shakespearean scholar, writer, professor and editor

Stanley attended Kingston from 1941 to 1948; he is a member of the Old Kingstonians’ Association, and a world authority on the life and works of Shakespeare. He read English at University College London and taught for several years in Hampshire. In 1958 he joined the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, and in 1962 was awarded a PhD for an edition of two prose works by Shakespeare’s contemporary Robert Greene. He became a Fellow of the Institute, where he supervised some 60 or more Ph.D. students as well as teaching on graduate and undergraduate courses. Stanley is author of many academic articles, books, and editions, and is General Editor of the Penguin edition of Shakespeare. He also became a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and then Vice-Chairman, an office which he held until 2003. He is now Honorary Governor Emeritus.

In 1977 Stanley was appointed Director of the Shakespeare Department of Oxford University Press with the specific responsibility of supervising a new Oxford edition of the Complete Works, which was published in 1968. While in Oxford he held an Honorary Research Fellowship of Balliol College.