Gary Taylor of English wins huge international book award

The Modern Language Association (MLA) has named Professor Gary Taylor’s 2,016-page Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works as the best scholarly book published in the world in the past two years. Taylor and John Lavagnino of King’s College London are the lead editors on that book, as well as its companion volume, Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture. The two-volume project took two decades, and among the 73 contributing editors are Professor Celia Daileader and Associate Professor Dan Vitkus, both of FSU’s Department of English. “Editing has always been a large part of my research, and this MLA prize is the best award that an editor can win because it reflects recognition from my peers in the whole world of editing, not limited to one country or one language,” said Taylor. “Such recognition would be rewarding, professionally and personally, for anyone, but it is especially significant to me because it powerfully endorses the claim that Thomas Middleton is indeed our other Shakespeare.” Middleton, who died in 1627, was an English playwright and poet. Taylor, the George Matthew Edgar Professor of English and founding director of FSU’s interdisciplinary History of Text Technology Program, is also a renowned Shakespeare scholar, having served as general editor of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, published by Oxford University Press in 1986 and revised in 2005. The award was given on Dec. 28 at the MLA convention in Philadelphia. To read more, go to http://www.fsu.com/News/MLA-Prize-for-a-Distinguished-Scholarly-Edition-Goes-to-FSU-s-Gary-Taylor