'Shakespeare' Revealed: The Collected Articles and Published Letters of J. Thomas Looney Collected and Introduced by James A. Warren (Veritas Publications, Feb. 9, 2019)
"Shakespeare" Revealed: The Collected Articles and Published Letters of J. Thomas Looney Collected and Introduced by James A. Warren was released today under Warren's new imprint, Veritas Publications on Amazon's print-on-demand service, Kindle Direct Publishing (formerly Create Space).
"Shakespeare" Revealed is a work of new scholarship covering the decades after the publication of Looney's "Shakespeare" Identified.
Warren said:
Although best known for “Shakespeare” Identified, the book in which he introduced, in 1920, the idea that Edward de Vere, 17thEarl of Oxford, was the pen behind the pseudonym “William Shakespeare,” J. Thomas Looney also wrote dozens of shorter pieces—fifty-three, all told—on the Shakespeare authorship question. Only a handful of these pieces have ever been reprinted, and, in fact, only eleven of them were even known of two years ago. This book brings all of them—articles and published letters, “old” and newly-discovered—together for the first time.
Among the most provocative of these pieces (see inside, pp. 155-166) are those that describe how “the suddenness and brilliancy of the great literary outburst of the latter half of Queen Elizabeth’s reign” resulted from “the active association of representatives of the intellectual movement with people educated by the refinements of the court.” It was only through such “group activity,” led by “the soul of the (great Elizabethan) age,” Edward de Vere, that “the Shakespeare dramas could have been made to embody, as they do, the whole culture of the age.” During the decades when the bulk of Looney’s shorter pieces were long forgotten, it was thought that he had largely turned away from the Oxfordian movement after publishing “Shakespeare” Identified. Only with the discovery of forty-two “new” articles and letters over the past two years has it become clear just how intensely Looney defended his book and his ideas and continued to work to substantiate the validity of the Oxfordian claim—the claim that “Shakespeare” had indeed been Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford—after the publication of “Shakespeare” Identified.
Among the most provocative of these pieces (see inside, pp. 155-166) are those that describe how “the suddenness and brilliancy of the great literary outburst of the latter half of Queen Elizabeth’s reign” resulted from “the active association of representatives of the intellectual movement with people educated by the refinements of the court.” It was only through such “group activity,” led by “the soul of the (great Elizabethan) age,” Edward de Vere, that “the Shakespeare dramas could have been made to embody, as they do, the whole culture of the age.” During the decades when the bulk of Looney’s shorter pieces were long forgotten, it was thought that he had largely turned away from the Oxfordian movement after publishing “Shakespeare” Identified. Only with the discovery of forty-two “new” articles and letters over the past two years has it become clear just how intensely Looney defended his book and his ideas and continued to work to substantiate the validity of the Oxfordian claim—the claim that “Shakespeare” had indeed been Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford—after the publication of “Shakespeare” Identified.
Warren's introduction to "Shakespeare" Revealed will be published separately in the next edition of the SOF Newsletter, Vol. 55, No. 1 Winter 2019.
James Warren is a former Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship (SOF) board member, and author of An Index to Oxfordian Publications: Including Oxfordian books and selected articles from non-Oxfordian publications now in its fourth edition, published October 2017 with Forever Press.
Last year Warren edited and published a centennial edition of the foundational Oxfordian treatise, "Shakespeare" Identified: in Edward de Vere the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Centenary Edition (Forever Press, September 2018) by J. Thomas Looney.
Warren anticipates publishing a new work titled J Thomas Looney and Shakespeare Identified: the Hundredth Anniversary of the Book That is Revolutionizing Shakespeare Studies on March 4, 2020 -- one-hundred years after the original Looney work was published on March 4, 1920. The new book will chronicle the impact of Looney's book in the century after it was published.
Warren is traveling to London today to spend the rest of this month cataloging Oxfordian items in the special collections of Brunel University and indexing the J. Thomas Looney collection at the University of London. His work is supported by the SOF as a recipient of a 2019 research grant. For more information on the grant, read "SOF Announces 2019 Research Grant Recipients" on the SOF website.
Warren's essay on the Oxfordian movement, "Time isn't necessarily on our side" , appears in the SOF Newsletter, Vol. 54, No. 4: Fall 2018
UPDATE: August 20, 2019
James Warren will present the Keynote Address: "Reclaiming the Oxfordian Past" highlighting his groundbreaking research at the 2019 Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Conference at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, October 17-20, 2019. FMI, see: "Speakers and topics announced . . . ".
Warren's essay on the Oxfordian movement, "Time isn't necessarily on our side" , appears in the SOF Newsletter, Vol. 54, No. 4: Fall 2018
His new edition of Esther Singleton's novel Shakespearian Fantasias: Adventures in the Fourth Dimension originally printed privately in 1930, was published by Veritas Publications last month on Jan 31, 2019.
UPDATE: August 20, 2019
James Warren will present the Keynote Address: "Reclaiming the Oxfordian Past" highlighting his groundbreaking research at the 2019 Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Conference at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, October 17-20, 2019. FMI, see: "Speakers and topics announced . . . ".