James A. Warren’s Centennial Symposium presentation, “J. Thomas Looney and the Most Revolutionary Book in the History of Shakespeare Studies,” is now available on the SOF YouTube channel.
The SOF “Shakespeare” Identified Centennial Symposium was held on March 4, 2020, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., 100 years to the day after the publication of “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. That historic 1920 book by British scholar J. Thomas Looney launched the modern Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship. Warren was the first of five speakers at the March 4 celebration. (Update: Also now available on YouTube are the presentations by Tom Regnier, Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, Bonner Miller Cutting, and Professor Roger Stritmatter.)
Warren’s presentation was the keynote lecture of the Centennial Symposium. He is the editor of the centenary edition of “Shakespeare” Identified, the first new scholarly edition of Looney’s book in decades, as well as a landmark collection of Looney’s published articles and letters (see below). He is now working on a new book about Looney. (Update: Warren was honored in October 2020 as Oxfordian of the Year.)
Warren’s lecture discusses how Looney’s insights changed our understanding of the author “Shakespeare,” the Shakespearean plays and poems, the Elizabethan theatre and era, and the nature of genius and literary creativity. He also provides a tantalizing glimpse of Looney himself — a brilliant, independent-minded, yet modest and unassuming scholar. Looney’s critics have mostly avoided the challenge of confronting his evidence-based analysis, resorting instead to irrelevant ad hominem smears and innuendo, including childish mockery of his surname, a respected family name from the Isle of Man.
James A. Warren was a U.S. Foreign Service officer for more than 20 years at eight embassies, and was executive director of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. In addition to his research and writing on J. Thomas Looney, he has published multiple editions of the invaluable reference work, An Index to Oxfordian Publications. He published a scholarly edition of Esther Singleton’s long-forgotten classic, Shakespearian Fantasias (1929), an Oxfordian-influenced book with which Henry Folger, founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library, was deeply fascinated, as discussed in Warren’s introduction (p. x) and in Maycock, “Branding the Author” (2016) (pp. 18–19 in print PDF version). Warren has published additional scholarly articles as well, for example, “Oxfordian Theory, Continental Drift, and the Importance of Methodology” in The Oxfordian (2015), and “Engaging Academia” in Brief Chronicles (2016).
Warren was introduced on March 4 by the Centennial Symposium moderator, award-winning journalist and author Bob Meyers, who served formerly as president of the National Press Foundation and director of the Harvard Journalism Fellowship for Advanced Studies in Public Health.
[published March 28, 2020, updated 2021]
