Brian Vickers (literary scholar)


Sir Brian William Vickers, FBA is a British academic, now Emeritus Professor at ETH Zurich. He is known for his work on the history of rhetoric, Shakespeare, John Ford, and Francis Bacon. He joined the English Department at University College London as a visiting professor in 2012.

Life

He was born in Cardiff, educated at St Marylebone Grammar School, London and at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating Bachelor of Arts in 1962 with a Double First in English, winning both the Charles Oldham Shakespeare Scholarship and the Harness Shakespeare Essay Prize. He was awarded his doctorate from Cambridge in 1967, and was a fellow of Downing College from 1966 to 1971 during which time he directed studies in English. In 1972 he became professor ordinarius at ETH Zurich.
He has been a fellow of the British Academy since 1998 and a senior research fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London since 2004. He was knighted for services to literary scholarship in the New Year Honours of 2008. He is the general editor of an old-spelling edition of the , published by Oxford University Press.

Works