Helen Hackett

Short Biography

Helen Hackett is known for her research on images of Elizabeth I, on Shakespeare and on early modern women’s writing. Her recent book, Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Meeting of Two Myths (Princeton University Press, 2009) brings together the first two of these interests, and is the culmination of many years of reading and thinking about the interlinked afterlives of these two supreme cultural icons. Her other books include Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (Macmillan, 1995) and Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2000). She has published on A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Writers and their Work series (1997) and for the New Penguin Shakespeare (where she wrote the introduction to the play, 2005). She is currently researching the writings of a 17th-century Catholic circle, the Aston and Thimelby families. She is a Reader in English at University College London, where she has taught since 1990. She was previously a Junior Research Fellow at Oxford University, where she also took her BA, MPhil and DPhil.