Katherine Dorothea Duncan-Jones, FRSL (13 May 1941 – 16 October 2022) was an English literature and Shakespeare scholar and was also a Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge (1965–1966), and then Somerville College, Oxford (1966–2001).
[7] For many years, she regularly reviewed productions of early modern drama for The Times Literary Supplement.
She wrote a pair of biographies of William Shakespeare, notable for their willingness to challenge received wisdom, their situating of Shakespeare within the context of his time, and their lack of "bardolatry"; Duncan-Jones was always well aware that there can be a vast distance between a person and their artistic work.
Her biographical writing on Shakespeare pointed to evidence she discovered, through careful study of archives, that the man, if not the poet, was a social climber obsessed with acquiring his coat of arms.
[9][10] Duncan-Jones is remembered for her love and knowledge of the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, her devotion to Renaissance literature and to the Bodleian Library, and her love of live theatre, especially productions of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists.