About the Authors

Sylvan Barnet
Sylvan Barnet did his undergraduate work at New York University, and his graduate work at Harvard University (Ph.D. in English Language and Literature). He is the author of numerous articles (chiefly about either Shakespeare or the English Romantic writers) in such journals as ELH, Philological Quarterly, PMLA, and Shakespeare Quarterly, and of several textbooks, including A Short Guide to Writing about Art, A Short Guide to Writing about Literature (with William E. Cain), Practical Guide to Writing (with Marcia Stubbs and Pat Bellanca), Introduction to Literature (with William E. Cain and others), Types of Drama (with Morton Berman and William Burto), and Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing (with Hugo Bedau). He is also the author of articles on Japanese iconography in The Dictionary of Art, the co-author of Zen Ink Paintings, the General Editor of The Signet Classic Shakespeare, and the editor of various paperback editions of plays, including the Signet edition of Doctor Faustus.

His work experience is limited to a few years as a semi-professional magician while in high school and college, a stint in the army, a few years as a teaching assistant in graduate school, and several decades of teaching composition and literature at Tufts University, where he served some time as Director of the Writing Program and Chair of the Department of English. Favorite quotation: The dying words attributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: "It has all been most interesting."

William Burto earned his MA at Harvard and then taught English for three years at the University of Iowa. He then returned to graduate school at Harvard. After receiving his Ph.D. he spent his career at the University of Lowell (Massachusetts), where he served as chair of the department of English for a decade. His special interest is twentieth-century Irish literature (Joyce and Yeats), but his interest in Japanese art caused him to join Sylvan Barnet in co-authoring JAPANESE INK PAINTING.

Lesley Ferris received her Ph.D. in Theatre Arts from the University of Minnesota in 1979. She worked in London, England for twelve years as a theatre director and teacher. She was Artistic Director of the York and Albany Theatre from 1979-1982 where she produced or directed over forty new plays. She was awarded an Arts Council of Great Britain playwriting grant for her script Subjugation of the Dragon. She also produced a series of New Writing Showcases to encourage and support new writing for the theatre. For nine years she worked at Middlesex University where she helped co-found the M.A. in Performance Art, the first degree of its kind in Great Britain. She has published numerous articles and two books: Acting Women: Images of Women in Theatre (Macmillan, 1990) and Crossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross Dressing (Routledge, 1993). In 1990 she was appointed Director of Theatre at the University of Memphis where she headed the MFA directing program and directed several award-winning plays including Portrait of Dora, The Rover, and Angels in America: Part II, Perestroika. In August 1996 she moved to Baton Rouge to take up the position of Chair of the Department of Theatre at Louisiana State University where she directed a critically acclaimed production of The Secret Garden. In January 1998 she was appointed the Chair of the Department of Theatre at Ohio State University.

Gerald Rabkin is best known for his book, Drama and Commitment: Politics in the American Theater of the Thirties, and for his recent work in theater theory and post-structuralist criticism. As a theater critic, he has written for the New York Soho News (for which he was Theater Editor), the London New Statesman, and the New York Metro-Herald. Dr. Rabkin now writes for many theater journals, among them Performing Arts Journal, American Theater, and the Kansas City Star. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University.