Kenneth Arthur Muir (5 May 1907 – 30 September 1996) was a literary scholar and writer, prominent in the fields of
Shakespeare studies and
English Renaissance theatre. He served as King Alfred Professor of English Literature at
Liverpool University from 1951 to 1974.
Muir edited volumes 19 through 33 of the Shakespeare Survey, and served as chairman of the International Shakespeare Association. He authored and edited a wide range of scholarly articles and books – primarily on Shakespeare and other Elizabethans, but also on various other subjects, including
John Keats,
Jean Racine, and
Pedro Calderon de la Barca. He edited modern texts of many classic plays of the
English Renaissance, including Othello,
King Lear,
Macbeth,Troilus and Cressida, and Richard II. He also edited the collected poems of Sir
Thomas Wyatt.
Muir is vulnerable to confusion with other authors with very similar names:
John Kenneth Muir, Kenneth B. Muir, Kenneth R. Muir, and Kenneth W. Muir.
Selected works of Kenneth Muir
Elizabethan Lyrics: A Critical Anthology (1952)
John Milton (1955)
Elizabethan and Jacobean Prose 1550-1620 (1956)
Jean Racine (1960)
Shakespeare as Collaborator (1960)
Last Periods of Shakespeare, Racine, Ibsen (1961)
The Voyage to Illyria (1970) with Sean O'Loughlin
A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies (1971) with
Samuel Schoenbaum
The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays (1977)
Shakespeare's Sonnets (1979)
Shakespeare's Tragic Sequence (1979)
Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto (1981) with Michael J. B. Allen
Macbeth (1951, 1984) Arden Second Series
Aspects of Macbeth (1977) edited with Philip Edwards
The Singularity of Shakespeare (1977)
References
Edwards, Philip, et al., eds. Shakespeare's Style: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Muir. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Kettle, Arnold, et al. KM 80: A Birthday Album for Kenneth Muir: Tuesday, 5 May 1987. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1987.