J Leslie Hotson

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John Leslie Hotson known as J Leslie Hotson or Leslie Hotson (1897 - 16th November 1992)

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Prolific Shakespearean scholar and sleuth, born at Delhi, Ontario.^[1] Cracked many, especially, Elizabethan literary puzzles - e.g. the murderer of Thomas of Woodstock (decoding Chaucer's Nunne's Priest's Tale); the murderer of Christopher Marlowe^[1]; the identity of Mr W H (to whom Shakespeare's sonnets were addressed)^[1]; the shape of the original Shakespearean theater^[1]; and identified a miniature colour portrait by Hilliard of Shakespeare as a young man. He also unearthed the letters that Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to his divorced wife Harriet^[1]; produced evidence of Shakespeare's father as a wool dealer; illuminated Shakespeare's early years in Stratford-on-Avon; and identified the killer of Henry Porter (a minor Elizabethan dramatist).

As the New York Times stated in his obituary: "But it was chiefly as a Shakespearian detective that Dr Hotson remained in the public eye, sometimes to the annoyance of rival scholars who discounted his theories."^[1]

His first major work, The Death of Christopher Marlowe — which made his name — is still in print. He stumbled across the evidence while decoding Chaucer's Nunne's Priest's Tale in the archives of the English Public Records Office in 1923/4 — published in 1923 — Colfox vs Chauntecleer.

[edit] Life Summary

Pacifist - served with Friends (Quaker) Relief Unit in France, 1918-1919
Educated at Harvard (BA, MA, PhD) and Yale
Married 1919, Mary May Peabody
Fulbright Exchange Scholar at Bedford College, London
Taught at Harvard, Yale (Research Associate) and New York University
Guggenheim Fellow 1929 and 1930 in 16th and 17th Century English Literature
Taught at Haverford College (1931-42)
Second War - Officer in Signal Corps
Fellow of King's College, Cambridge (England), 1954-60.
He is the author of many books of literary biography, criticism and detection, such as:
- Colfox vs Chauntecleer 1924 PMLA XXXIX
- The Death of Christopher Marlowe 1925
- The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage 1929
- Shakespeare versus Shallow 1931
- The Adventure of a Single Rapier 1931
- I, William Shakespeare
- Shakespeare's Sonnets Dated
- Shakespeare's Motley
- The First Night of Twelfth Night, 1954
- Shakespeare's Wooden O, 1959
- Mr WH, 1964
- Shakespeare by Hilliard, 1977