Giles Edwin Dawson (4 March 1903 – 26 August 1994) was a 20th-century Shakespearean scholar, paleographer, and librarian.

Life

Born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of noted American ornithologist

William Leon Dawson William Leon Dawson (1873–1928) was a noted American ornithologist, author and lecturer. Early years William Dawson was born on 20 February 1873 at Leon, a small county seat in southern Iowa just north of the Missouri state line. He was the ...

and Frances Etta Akerman. Dawson graduated from

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

in 1925 and went on to earn an MA and PhD from Cornell University. He served on the faculty of the University of North Dakota and the

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

in Cleveland before joining the Folger Shakespeare Library as a reference librarian in 1932. Dawson served in the U. S. Navy in World War II. From 1946 until his retirement in 1967, he was the curator of books and manuscripts for the Folger. He was a member of the

Catholic University Catholic higher education includes universities, colleges, and other institutions of higher education privately run by the Catholic Church, typically by religious institutes. Those tied to the Holy See are specifically called pontifical univ ...

faculty from 1935 to 1972, lecturing to graduate students until 1967. He also taught at Howard University from 1975 to 1977. From 1984 until May 1994, he volunteered as the rare-book librarian for the Washington National Cathedral.

Family

Dawson married Margaret Williams in 1926. They had two children. She died in 1957. Two years later he married Margaret White, with whom he had three children.

Major works

*''July and Julian''. Ed. with Arthur Brown. Malone Society Reprints, 1955 *''Life of William Shakespeare''. Folger Shakespeare Library, 1958 *''Four Centuries of Shakespeare Publication''. University of Kansas Press, 1964 *''Records of plays and players in Kent, 1450-1642''. Malone Society Collections, Vol. 7, Oxford University Press, 1965 *''Elizabethan Handwriting, 1500–1650: A Guide to the Reading of Documents''. with Laetitia Kennedy-Skipton. W. W. Norton and Company, 1966 *"A Seventh Signature for Shakespeare". ''Shakespeare Quarterly'' 43 (Spring 1992): 72–79, p. 79

References

"Giles E. Dawson, 91, Dies; Authority on Shakespeare". Obituary. '' The Washington Post'', 29 August 1994, D4, col. 1.

External links

''Four Centuries of Shakespeare Publication''
(1964)
KU Scholarworks
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dawson, Giles Shakespearean scholars Cornell University alumni Rare book librarians Folger Shakespeare Library 1903 births 1994 deaths