Annabel Patterson

Annabel Patterson's picture
Sterling Professor Emeritus of English

Ph.D., University of London, England, 1965

My interests have widened with age. Starting as a specialist in English Renaissance literature, I have gradually expanded to cover the history of censorship, historiography, early modern law, liberalism, parliamentary history, and most recently problems of nationalism and internationalism as represented in the modern (and usually prize-winning)novel. Under the concept of literature, I have specialized in Milton and Marvell. Under the concept of historiography I wrote Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles. (1994). The subject of Early Modern Liberalism (1997) is self-evident, also true for the little book on Milton’s Words. I was general  editor of the Yale edition of Marvell’s prose works. The Long Parliament of Charles II (2008) developed out of that work on Marvell, and a new project, Restoration State Trials, will add early modern law, particularly treason law, to the picture. As a complete diversion, The International Novel, to be published by Yale, has taken me out of England and into the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Since retirement, I have steadily taught one course a year, which helps to keep me lively.