Name Sylvan Barnet Role Author | ||
![]() | ||
Books A Short Guide to Writing A, Current Issues and Enduring, From Critical Thinking t, Literature for Composition, A Short Guide to Writing a Similar People Hugo Adam Bedau, Joseph Pearce, William Shakespeare, Harold Bloom, Sean McEvoy |
Sylvan Saul Barnet (December 11, 1926 – January 11, 2016) was an American literary critic and Shakespearean scholar. He was a Fletcher Professor of English Emeritus at Tufts University.
Contents

Barnet is the author of numerous books and articles on Shakespeare. He was the general editor of the Signet Classics Shakespeare, the author of A Short Guide to Shakespeare, and has written many textbooks. He is the co-author with William Burto of occasional essays on aspects of Japanese art. He has also written books about the art of writing.
Biography
Sylvan Barnet was born in Brooklyn and attended Erasmus Hall High School. He served in the US Army in 1945-46. He got his bachelor's degree in 1948 at New York University and then his MA in 1950 and Ph.D in 1954 at Harvard. Barnet was professor emeritus at Tufts University, where he taught English literature from 1954 to 1984 and served for several terms as chair of the English department. Barnet lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died of cancer at his home there on January 11, 2016, at the age of 89.