Former students publish book to honor Bevington

David Bevington, the Phyllis Fay Horton Professor in the Humanities, was honored this summer in an unusually wordy way -- a group of his former students recently published the book A New History of Early English Drama in honor of Bevington's achievements.

"We felt the best tribute we could make would be to put together the best book we could," said John Cox (Ph.D.'75), an English professor at Hope College, in the Aug. 1 Chronicle of Higher Education. Cox co-edited the book with David Scott Kastan (Ph.D.'75).

A New History, published by Columbia University Press, sums up the latest scholarship on early drama and includes 26 essays on the material conditions under which plays were produced until the 17th century. The essays touch upon the staging of plays in churches, universities and households; the issue of censorship; and the publication of manuscripts.

The nine scholars who compiled the book are all former students of Bevington's, although many of the contributors are not. "I'm very impressed and just delighted," said Bevington, who has been on the University faculty since 1968. "They've done a good job of finding the right people everywhere to contribute to a book on this topic."