Two works by Glasgow University academics have been selected out of thousands of publications to be listed in the 100 Best Shakespeare Sources of all time.

The selection of Shakespeare's Books (2001) and Shakespeare and Comedy (2005) by Dr Stuart Gillespie and Dr Robert Maslen respectively, marks the academics as among the best Shakespearean scholars in the world.

Head of the Department of English Literature, Dr John Coyle, said: 'This is a very significant list having been compiled by the doyen of British Shakespeare experts, Professor Jonathan Bate. There was no restriction on time, place, or language of publication so to have two members of our department selected from such an extensive range is particularly impressive.'

Dr Stuart Gillespie's Shakespeare's Books (2001) is a 500-page encyclopedia of all the authors and works Shakespeare himself read, explaining their impact on his plays and poems. It has been praised by reviewers far and wide and according to the American journal Shakespeare Quarterly, 'Stuart Gillespie's remarkable book belongs on the shelves of all academic libraries and in the hands of all serious students of Shakespeare.'

Dr Robert Maslen's Shakespeare and Comedy (2005) is a study of eleven of Shakespeare's comedies. It sets them in the context of intense hostility to the theatre in Elizabethan England, and suggests that this hostility made them seem dangerous as well as delightful to their early audiences. Maslen's book has been warmly welcomed, described by the Observer as 'a fascinating and original contribution to the study of Shakespeare's earlier comedies'

The list was compiled for well-known New York publishers Random House and their series of classics, the Modern Library. The full list can be viewed at: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/rsc/sources.html

Kate Richardson (K.Richardson@admin.gla.ac.uk)

For more information please contact Kate Richardson in the University of Glasgow's Media Relations Office on 0141 330 3683 or email K.Richardson@admin.gla.ac.uk

First published: 15 May 2007