Sir Brian Vickers, FBA (born 1937) is a British academic, now Emeritus Professor at ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....

. He is known for his work on the history of rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

, Shakespeare, John Ford

John Ford (dramatist)

John Ford was an English Jacobean and Caroline playwright and poet born in Ilsington in Devon in 1586.-Life and work:...

, and Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

.

He was born in Cardiff

Cardiff

Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...

, educated at St. Marylebone Grammar School, London and at Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, graduating B.A. in 1962 with a Double First in English, winning both the Charles Oldham Shakespeare Scholarship and the Harness Shakespeare Essay Prize. He was awarded a Cambridge doctorate in 1967, and taught there until 1972. In that year he became Professor Ordinarius at ETH.

He has been a Fellow of the British Academy

British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

 since 1998 (Corresponding, Ordinary Fellow from 2003) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies

Institute of English Studies

The Institute of English Studies is a centre of excellence in the research, promotion and facilitation in the field English Literature and Language. With a specialisation in Book History, Palaeography and Textual Scholarship, the IES facilitates the advanced study and research of English Studies...

, University of London since 2004. He was knighted

Knight Bachelor

The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...

 for services to literary scholarship in the New Year Honours of 2008

New Year Honours 2008

The New Year Honours 2008 for the Commonwealth Realms were announced on 29 December 2007, to celebrate the year passed and mark the beginning of 2008....

. He is the General Editor of an old-spelling edition of the Complete Works of John Ford, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Works

• The Man of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie
  Henry Mackenzie
  Henry Mackenzie was a Scottish novelist and miscellaneous writer. He was also known by the sobriquet "Addison of the North."-Biography:Mackenzie was born in Edinburgh....
  
  (1967) editor
• Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose (1968)
• The Artistry of Shakespeare's Prose (1968)
• The World of Jonathan Swift: essays for the tercentenary (1968)
• Essential articles for the study of Francis Bacon (1968) with Rut Tarselius
• Seventeenth-century Prose: an anthology (1969) editor
• Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry (1970)
• Towards Greek Tragedy: drama, myth, society (1973)
• Shakespeare; the critical heritage (six volumes, 1974–81) editor
• Francis Bacon (1978)
• Frances Yates and the Writing of History (1979)
• Shakespeare's Hypocrites (1979)
• Rhetorical and Anti-rhetorical Tropes : on writing the history of elocution (1981)
• Shakespeare: Coriolanus (1981) editor
• Rhetoric Revalued: papers from the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (1982) editor
• Epideictic and Epic in the Renaissance (1983)
• Epideictic rhetoric in Galileo's "Dialogo" (1983)
• Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (1984) editor
• Rhetoric and the Pursuit of Truth: language change in the 17th and 18th centuries (1985) editor with Nancy S. Struever
• Public and Private Life in the Seventeenth Century: the Mackenzie-Evelyn debate (1986)
• English Science, Bacon to Newton (1987)
• In Defence of Rhetoric (1988)
• Returning to Shakespeare (1989)
• Arbeit, Musse, Meditation : Studies in the Vita activa and Vita contemplativa (1991)
• Appropriating Shakespeare: contemporary critical quarrels (1993)
• The history of the reign of King Henry VII and selected works by Francis Bacon (1998) editor
• The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral by Francis Bacon (1999) editor
• English Renaissance Literary Criticism (1999) editor
• Shakespeare, Co-author: a historical study of the five collaborative plays (2002)
• The major works: [including New Atlantis and the Essays] by Francis Bacon (2002) essays
• Counterfeiting Shakespeare: evidence, authorship, and John Ford's Funerall elegye (2002)
• The Merchant of Venice (2005) editor with William Baker
• Shakespeare, A lover's complaint, and John Davies of Hereford (2007)

External links

• Official page at ETH Zurich
• Official page at the Institute of English Studies, School for Advanced Study
• Bibliography (PDF)
• Renaissance Quarterly 60.1 (2007) 320-321 (Vickers's review of McKnight's The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon's Thought)