Harold Jenkins (Shakespeare scholar)

Harold Jenkins, FBA (19 July 1909 – 4 January 2000) is described as "one of the foremost Shakespeare scholars of his century".

[6] He wrote two monographs on Henry Chettle and Edward Benlowes, and he published editions of Elizabethan plays and numerous scholarly articles.

He was the eldest son of Henry Jenkins (1878–1932), a dairyman, and his wife, Mildred, née Carter.

This thesis was supervised by W. W. Greg, and was subsequently published as The Life and Work of Henry Chettle.

His Witwatersrand doctorate thesis was later published as Edward Benlowes (1602–76): Biography of a Minor Poet (1952).

Jenkins believed "editing was the most valuable of all scholarly activities, for the edition of a text will stand for future ages long after the fogs of critical opinion have dispersed"[10] Writing in the Shakespeare Newsletter, he said that "the complex relation between Q2 and F remains the chief unsolved problem of the Hamlet texts".

[13] In 1986 Jenkins received the annual Shakespeare Prize from the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation and the fellowship of the British Academy in 1989.

[15] Jenkins served on the council of the Malone Society for forty years, and he was elected its president in 1989.

She soon became a highly regarded historian, and she shared his scholarly interests until her death in a car accident in 1984.

He died at his home in Surrey, and he left his books and papers to Queen Mary and Westfield College.