Kevin M. Sharpe (26 January 1949 – 5 November 2011) was a British

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

, Director of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, Leverhulme Research Professor and Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. He is best known for his work on the reign of Charles I of England.Kevin Sharpe obituary
The Guardian

Education and career

Kevin Sharpe studied as an undergraduate and postgraduate at St Catherine's College, Oxford, and from 1974 to 1978, he was a junior research fellow at

Oriel College, Oxford Oriel College () is Colleges of the University of Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Located in Oriel Square, the college has the distinction of being the oldest royal foundation in Oxford (a title for ...

. Formerly he was visiting Professor at Princeton, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology, the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

and the Max Planck Institute,

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

. He was also lecturer at the

University of Southampton The University of Southampton (abbreviated as ''Soton'' in post-nominal letters) is a public university, public research university in Southampton, England. Southampton is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universit ...

, where he was awarded a personal chair in 1994. From 2001 he worked at the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

, and from 2005 at

Queen Mary University of London Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and formerly Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public university, public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University ...

. During the late 1970s and 1980s, Sharpe, together with scholars such as Conrad Russell, John Morrill, and Mark Kishlansky, was labelled a revisionist political historian for his criticism of the previous Whiggish narrative of the English Revolution. Particularly, Sharpe advocated a revisionist interpretation of the period in English history beginning from the Caroline period towards the English Revolution, suggesting that the English nation during the 1620s was not as divided as traditionally portrayed. As a leading revisionist, he welcomed the shift towards increased role of literary and artistic representations in the chronicle of early modern politics.

Publications

* ''Reading Authority and Representing Rule in Early Modern England'', Bloomsbury, 2013 * ''Image Wars: Promoting Kings and Commonwealths in England, 1603–1660'',

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...

, 2010, * ''Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth Century England'', YUP, 2009, * ''Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-Century Politics'', Cambridge University Press, 2000, * ''Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England'', Yale University Press, 2000, * ''The Personal Rule of Charles I'', Yale University Press, 1992, * ''Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I'', CUP, 1987, * ''Sir Robert Cotton, 1586–1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England'', OUP, 1979, As editor: *

Honours

* Fellow of the

Royal Historical Society The Royal Historical Society (RHS), founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history. Origins The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the H ...

since 1979Kevin Sharpe, 1949-2011
Times Higher Education * Fellow of the English Association since 2002. * Whitfield prize of the Royal Historical Society for his book of 1987, ''Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I'' * Fletcher Jones research professor at the Huntington Library * Mellon professor at the California Institute of Technology

References

External links

Kevin Sharpe, BA MA DPhil (Oxford) Leverhulme Research Professor and Professor of Renaissance Studies
Department of English, Queen Mary University of London {{DEFAULTSORT:Sharpe, Kevin J. 1949 births 2011 deaths 20th-century British historians 21st-century British historians Fellows of the English Association English Revolution Historians of the early modern period Alumni of St Catherine's College, Oxford Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford Historians of the University of Oxford Academics of the University of Southampton Academics of the University of Warwick Academics of Queen Mary University of London