John Dover Wilson, C.H., Litt D., F.B.A., was educated at Lancing College and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He was English Lector in the University of Helsingfors from 1906 to 1909, and later was lecturer in English at Goldsmith`s College, University of London, Professor of Education at King`s College, University of London, and Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh from 1936 until his retirement in 1945.

          He has written many books on Shakespeare and Elizabethan England of which The Essential Shakespeare, Life in Shakespeare`s England, What Happens in Hamlet, and Fortunes of Falstaff are most widely known. Since his retirement he has devoted most of his time to The New Shakespeare, of which he has been sole editor since the completion of the comedies which he editor jointly with the late Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.

          He has been trustee of Shakespeare`s birthplace since 1931, is on the Editor Board of the new annual Shakespeare Survey and has broadcast on the Third Programme of the B.B.C.