Patricia Easterling
Newnham College
Cambridge University
Cambridge CB3 9DF
England
Tel. +44 (0)1233 335784
Fax: +44 (0)1223 357898

Pat Easterling was Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge from 1994 until she retired in 2001; before that she taught in Manchester, Cambridge and London. She works mainly on Greek literature, particularly tragedy; but she also studies the survival and reception of ancient drama. Her most recent book is Greek and Roman Actors: aspects of an ancient profession (Cambridge 2002), co-edited with Edith Hall. She is currently writing a commentary on Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus.

Further proof of the current enthusiasm for Greek drama and its reception: Surviving Greek Tragedy by Robert Garland, on the point of being published by Duckworth. Garland's book covers the whole story from the fifth century BC to the present, with a fascinating section on the centuries when no plays were put on anywhere. This is when it mattered most that some books survived – and that a few plays were studied as school texts by Greek speakers. It's vigorously written and finely illustrated, and the last chapter enters the debate about making sense of modern productions.