Anne Barton was the author of Essays, Mainly Shakespearean (1994), Byron: Don Juan (1992), The Names of Comedy (1990), Ben Jonson, Dramatist (1984) and, (as Anne Righter), Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (1962), as well as many essays and introductions. In 2000, she retired as Professor of English at the University of Cambridge, where she was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; she had previously been a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Girton College, Cambridge, and was a Fellow of the British Academy. From the 1960s onwards, her work had a profound influence on the Royal Shakespeare Company and the performance and academic study of early modern drama more generally. Anne Barton died in 2013.