David's research interests are in theatre and the history and practice of life writing. Publications include monographs for Oxford University Press, Methuen, Palgrave, and Cambridge University Press. He has also worked on major editions of classic texts, most recently of Congreve's The Way of the World (Methuen, 2020) and Colley Cibber's Apology (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
His latest book is a history of the Royal Shakespeare Company's engagement with Restoration Drama (Palgrave, 2024). He has also written textbooks, novels, and numerous articles for learned journals and essay collections, most recently for The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music (2022), The Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature (2024), and The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship (2024). David is a National Teaching Fellow and Fellow of the English Association.
David taught at the Universities of Bristol and Oxford before a five-year stint working in Japan, where he worked for the Universities of Kyoto and Osaka as well as lecturing for the British Council. He returned to the UK to teach at the University of Worcester, also lecturing part-time at the University of Warwick, before being appointed Head of English at Birmingham City University.
His subsequent period as Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of Arts, Design and Media featured many highlights: the building of the new Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, the expansion of the Queen's Award-winning Birmingham School of Jewellery, and the development of a research culture that saw four units of assessment achieve an average rating of 'internationally excellent' in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.
Today he remains a part-time Professor of English at BCU, a role he combines with that of University Orator.
- Teaching MA Creative Non-Fiction, MA Texts in Transition and Research Methods, BA Moral Philosophy, BA Collaborative Practice.
- Working on various projects in Restoration/Eighteenth-Century Theatre and Prose.
- Essays forthcoming in The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Urban Literatures and The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare in Music.
- Early Modern and Eighteenth-Century Theatre
- History and Practice of Life Writing
- Theatre management and governance
- BA (Hons) 1st class, University of Bristol.
- DPhil, Faculty of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford.
- Fellow of the English Association
- Member of the Association of National Teaching Fellows
- MA Texts in Transition
- MA Research Methods
- BA Moral Philosophy
- Supervision and Lectures on various literary subjects
- Restoration actors and acting
- Theatrical biography
- Text editing
- I welcome proposals for projects on seventeenth-century drama or the history of life writing
Monographs and editions (earliest first)
- The Ladies: Female Patronage of Restoration Drama, 1660-1700. Oxford English Monographs (Oxford University Press, 1989)
- Ed., (with S.H. Monk) Daniel Defoe, Colonel Jack. Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford University Press, 1989)
- Ed. (with L. Landa) Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year. Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford University Press, 1990)
- Ed. Lord Chesterfield, Letters. Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford University Press, 1992)
- Thomas Betterton: The Greatest Actor of the Restoration Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
- Updated version of the 1990 edition of A Journal of the Plague Year (Oxford University Press, 2010)
- Ed., Pinacotheca Bettertonaeana: The Library of a Seventeenth-Century Actor. (Society for Theatre Research, 2013)
- Restoration Plays and Players (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
- George Farquhar: A Migrant Life Reversed (Methuen, July 2018)
- Ed., William Congreve, The Way of the World. New Mermaids series (Methuen, 2020)
- Ed., Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
- Staging Restoration Comedy: The Royal Shakespeare Company, 1967-2019 (Palgrave, 2024)
- Restoration Acting and Other Business: The Lives of Henry Harris (under contract to Cambridge University Press)
Textbooks
- The Student’s Guide to Writing Essays (Taylor & Francis, 1997)
- Careers Using English, with Margaret Clewett (Taylor & Francis, 1998)
- Games for English Literature, with Izabela Hopkins (Libri, 2016)
Refereed journal articles
- ‘Old Hamlet and the Archbishop: a new allusion in Hamlet?’ Notes and Queries NS 43 no.2 (June 1996)
- ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: An Afternoon at the Bunraku Theatre’, Studies in Theatre Production vol.15 no.1 (March 1997)
- ‘Towards a Study of Theatre Journalism’, Studies in Theatre Production vol.15 no.4 (December 1997)
- ‘Shakespeare’s Fellows: Names and Collocations’, Cahiers Elisabethains vol.56 no.1 (January 1999)
- ‘Donne, Geography, and the Hymn to God my God in My Sicknesse’, Notes and Queries no.46 (June 1999)
- ‘Making the Words Count: Towards an Analytical Database of Theatre Reviews’, New Theatre Quarterly XV no.4 (November 1999)
- ‘Ravishing Strides: signs of the peripatetic on the early modern stage’, New Theatre Quarterly vol XVII no.1 (February 2001)
- ‘Henry VIII and The True Chronicle History of King Leir’, Notes and Queries vol.48 no.3 (September 2001)
- ‘Two Shakespearian Allusions and the Date of Marvell’s A Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun’, Notes and Queries NS 49, no.3 (September 2002)
- ‘Shakespeare, Theater Criticism and the Acting Tradition’, Shakespeare Quarterly vol 53 no.3 (Fall 2002)
- ‘As Rude as You Like – Honest: Theatre Criticism and the Law’, New Theatre Quarterly vol XIX part 3 (September 2003)
- ‘Sir Fopling in the Mall: Parks in The Man of Mode’, Notes and Queries NS 50 no. 3 (September 2003)
- ‘Caesar’s Gift; playing the park in the late seventeenth century’, ELH vol 71 no.2 (Summer 2004).
- ‘Sleeping Beauties: Shakespeare, Sleep and the Stage’, The Cambridge Quarterly 35 no. 3 (September 2006)
- ‘Thomas Betterton, Private Tutor’; Notes and Queries NS 54, no.1 (March 2007)
- ‘Thomas Betterton, bookseller’s apprentice’; The Review of English Studies vol 58 no.236 (November 2007)
- ‘The 1695 Actors’ Rebellion: new light on old patentees’; Notes and Queries (December 2007)
- ‘”Almost impossible in Praise”: Dedicatory Criticism in English Dramatic Texts, 1660-1710’; commissioned essay for special issue (no.15) of 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era (October 2008)
- ‘”I think no ill one:” A recently discovered letter from Thomas Betterton sheds new light on the Chandos Portrait,’ The Times Literary Supplement, 14 August 2009
- ‘Social Status and the actor: the case of Thomas Betterton,’ Studies in Theatre and Performance vol. 30 no. 2 (Summer 2010), 173-85
- ‘Ranked Among the Best: Cultural Agency in Restoration Translations of French Drama, 1660-1714,’ Modern Language Review vol.108 no.3 (July 2013)
- ‘Chocolate Covered Broccoli? Games and the Literature Student’ (co-authored with Izabela Hopkins), Changing English vol 22 no 2 (May 2015) DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2015.1022508
- ‘Shakespeare and the Jewellers’, The Cambridge Quarterly, 45 (2) June 2016, 157-74
- ‘First Night in Bristol: Reflections on a 250th Anniversary’, New Theatre Quarterly, vol 32 no.3 (August 2016)
- ‘Annotating Place in Defoe, Modern Language Review, 114 no.3 July 2019
- ‘Beethoven and Shakespeare: Ghosts and Heroes’, The Cambridge Quarterly vol.48 no.2, June 2019, pp.95-112
- ‘The Path to Woolf Works and the Language of Design: an Interview with Ravi Deepres’, forthcoming in New Theatre Quarterly, August 2019
- ‘Colley Cibber and Winchester College’ (with Suzanne Foster), Notes and Queries, September 2020
- ‘Harris vs Harris: A Restoration Actor at the Court of Arches’ (with Richard Palmer), Huntington Library Quarterly (forthcoming 2024)
Invited chapters in scholarly books
- ‘Thomas Killigrew, Theatre Manager,’ in Philip Major, ed., Thomas Killigrew: Revisionary Essays (Ashgate, 2013), pp.63-90
- ‘Writing the Ethical Life: Theatrical Biography and the Case of Thomas Betterton,’ in Theatre History and Historiography: Ethics, Evidence and Truth, ed. Claire Cochrane and Jo Robinson (Palgrave, 2016), pp.33-47
- ‘Shakespeare and Terrorism’, in Jonathan Harris, ed., Terrorism and Art (Routledge, 2020), pp.173-82
- ‘Living with Ghosts: Shakespeare, Beethoven and Wagner’, in Christopher Wilson and Mervyn Cooke, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare in Music (Oxford University Press, 2022), pp.575-606
- ‘Restoration Comedy and London’, in Jeremy Tambling, ed., The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Urban Literature (online, Palgrave, 2021)
- ‘Daniel Defoe and London’, in Jeremy Tambling, ed., The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Urban Literature (online, Palgrave, 2021)
- ‘Theatre Censorship in Restoration London: the Case of Charles Killigrew’, in The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship, ed. Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders (Palgrave, forthcoming 2024)
- ‘True Comedy? Etherege, Shadwell and Wycherley’, in The Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature, ed. Matthew Augustine and Steven N. Zwicker (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2024)
Publications: Scholarly reviews
- Substantial body of reviews, 1989 to present, for Shakespeare Quarterly, Renaissance Quarterly, Notes and Queries, Studies in Theatre Production, Studies in English Literature, Theatre Notebook, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, and The Scriblerian.
Invited entries in reference works
- ‘Thomas Betterton,’ ‘John Crowne,’ and ‘Congreve’s The Way of the World’ for The Literary Encyclopaedia (online publication)
- ‘Hamlet on the English Stage, 1603-1709,’ for Peter W. Marx, ed., Hamletbuch (Metzler Verlag, 2014)
- ‘Theatre Criticism, 1660-1800,’ and ‘Jeremy Collier’ in Gary Day and Jack Lynch, eds., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Eighteenth-Century Literature (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).
Programme essays
- Numerous programme essays on diverse subjects for the Royal Opera House, Bristol Old Vic, Birmingham Rep, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Mid Wales Opera, Nottingham Playhouse.
Fiction
- The Life of Harris the Actor (Birmingham and Shanghai: Gold Word, 2015)
- Plague Year (Birmingham and Shanghai: Gold Word, 2020)
- Numerous short stories here and there.
Other publications
- Hippodrome 120, with a Foreword by Sir Matthew Bourne (Birmingham Hippodrome, 2019)
Appearances on BBC Radio 3 (on fairy tales and opera) and Radio 4 (Restoration Theatre). Programme essays for variety of theatres.
David is one of the University’s dedicated team of trained media champions, and can comment on a range of subjects including:
- Theatre
- The Arts
- Literature
- Opera
To arrange a media interview, please contact Birmingham City University Press Office on 0121 331 6738, 07967 271532,
email press@bcu.ac.uk or via Twitter @BCUPressOffice
- Past trusteeships at the Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham Rep, Mid Wales Opera, National Academy of Writing.
