Stanley Wells, former Director of the Shakespeare Institute, took his first degree from University College London, of which he is now an honorary Fellow, in 1951. He studied for his Ph. D. at the Institute from 1958 to 1961, and became a Fellow in the following year with, eventually, a Readership in English.

In 1978 he moved to Oxford to serve as founding  head of the Shakespeare department of Oxford University  Press and General Editor of the Oxford edition of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, first published in both modern and original spelling versions in 1986, and as General Editor of the multi-volume Oxford Shakespeare, now almost complete. During his period in Oxford he held a Senior Research Fellowship of Balliol College.

In 1988 he was appointed Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Shakespeare Institute, a post which he held until 1997. He is now Emeritus Professor and an Honorary Fellow.

Since 1995 he has held the honorary position of Chairman of the Shakespeare  Birthplace Trust and now has his office at the Trust’s Headquarters, The Shakespeare Centre.

Since 1974 he has been a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company, of which he became Vice-Chairman. He is now Honorary Governor Emeritus.

He was Chairman of the  International Shakespeare Association from 1996 to 2001. He is a Trustee of the Rose Theatre and a Council member of the Globe Theatre.

Honorary Doctorates

He holds honorary doctorates of Furman University, South Carolina, and of the Universities of Munich, Hull, and Durham.

Conferences

He has taken part in and organized  international conferences in England and overseas, and has given such lectures as the British Academy Annual Shakespeare (1987), the Hilda Hulme Memorial (1987), the First Annual Globe (1990), the Melchiori (Rome, 1991), and the Walter Clyde Curry (Vanderbilt University, 1998).

Awards

In 1995 he was awarded the Walcott Award of the Library Association for services to bibliography, and he was made a CBE for services to literature in the Birthday Honours List, 2007.

Publications

His single-authored books include Literature and Drama (1970), Royal Shakespeare (1977), Shakespeare: the Writer and his Work (1978), Shakespeare: An Illustrated Dictionary 1978 (2nd edition 1985, revised as The Oxford Dictionary of Shakespeare, 1998 etc.), Re-editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader (1984), Shakespeare: a Dramatic Life (1994; published by Norton as Shakespeare: A  Life in Drama, revised edition as Shakespeare: The Poet and His Plays, Methuen, 1997), Shakespeare: For All Time (Macmillan, 2002, also published in America and in Czech and Norwegian translations), Looking for Sex in Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2004), Shakespeare & Co (Penguin, 2006, Pantheon, 2007), and Is It True What They Say About Shakespeare (Long Barn Books, 2007).

He is co-author with Paul Edmondson of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, a volume in the Oxford Shakespeare Topics series, of which he is joint General  Editor with Peter Holland.

He is General Editor of the Penguin edition of Shakespeare, for which he edited A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1967), Richard II (1969), and The Comedy of Errors (1972). For the multi-volume Oxford  Shakespeare he  has edited Twelfth Night  (with  Roger  Warren, 1994) and King Lear (2000). He edited the  annual Shakespeare Survey for Cambridge University Press from 1980 to 1999 and is an Associate  Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and of the forthcoming revised Oxford Companion to English Literature. Other publications include Thomas Nashe: Selected Writings (1964), Shakespeare: A Reading Guide 1969), Oxford Select Bibliographical Guides: Shakespeare 1973 (new edition 1990), English Drama Excluding Shakespeare (1975), a five-volume collection of Nineteenth Century Shakespeare Burlesques (1977), an edition, with R L Smallwood, of Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday (Revels Plays, 1979), and, with Gary Taylor, Modernizing Shakespeare’s Spelling, with three studies in the text of Henry V, 1979. He has edited Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1985), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies (1986), William Shakespeare a Textual Companion (co-authored with Gary Taylor et al, 1987), An Oxford Anthology of Shakespeare (1987), Shakespeare and the Moving Image 1994, Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism (1997), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare (ed. with Margreta de Grazia,  2001), The  Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (with Michel Dobson, 2001), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare in the Theatre (with Sarah  Stanton, CUP,  2002) and Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide (ed. with Lena  Orlin, 2003).

He has published many articles and essays in books and learned journals including Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Theatre Notebook, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, etc., has reviewed for numerous publications including the TLS etc., and frequently broadcasts on both radio and television. An imaginary interview, Coffee with Shakespeare, co-written with Paul Edmondson, will appear in 2008.