Henry Ruxton Woudhuysen, (born 24 October 1954), is a British academic specialising in Renaissance English literature. He was the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford from 2012 to 2024. He was previously Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at University College London.
Biography Woudhuysen was educated at St. Paul's School, London, and studied for MA and DPhil degrees at Pembroke College, Oxford. His doctoral thesis title was Leicester's literary patronage: A study of the English court, 1578–1582 and his supervisor was Katherine Duncan-Jones. His first academic role was at Lincoln College as a Junior Research Fellow in English Literature in 1978 before he joined University College London.
In 2010, Woudhuysen was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Between 1995 and 2020 Woudhuysen served as a general editor for the third series of the Arden Shakespeare.
The Oxford Companion to the Book which he edited with Michael F. Suarez was published in 2010.Baker, William. "The Passion for the Book and Bibliography". Suarez, Michael F., S.J., and H.R. Woudhuysen, Eds. The Oxford Companion to the Book. 2 Vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.1: Lxvi+653 Pp.; 2: Xi+654-1327 Pp. Illus. Cloth, Slipcase. $220 or £175. ( ISBN 978-0-19-860653-6). The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 2011: 407-413.
The Book: A Global History by Woudhuysen and Michael F. SuarezSuarez, Michael Felix, H. R. Woudhuysen, and Oxford University Press. The Book: A Global History. Oxford: University Press, 2013. was published in 2013.Supple, Shannon K. "The Book: A Global History". RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage. Chicago: American Library Association, 2015.
In 2023 he gave the Panizzi Lectures at the British Library.
Personal life Woudhuysen is married to Deborah Loudon, a former HR director in the Home Office. Their son George is a historian of the Roman Empire at the University of Nottingham.
Bibliography The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse: 1509–1659 (editor; London: Penguin Books, 1992) Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) The Oxford Companion to the Book (co-editor with Michael F. Suarez; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) The Book: A Global History (co-editor with Michael F. Suarez; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Essays to Mark the Centenary of the Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1922–2022 (co-editor with David Rundle; Oxford: The Oxford Bibliographical Society, 2024)
References
External links Lincoln College biography Full text of his doctoral thesis via Oxford Research Archive