Lee Bliss | August 9, 1943 – December 8, 2006

On December 8th, Professor Lee Bliss passed away after a heroic battle with lung cancer. She was 63 years old. Born in Buffalo, NY, she was raised there as well as in Tucson, AZ. After earning a BA at Stanford University and a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Bliss taught at UCLA and then for 30 years in the English Department at UCSB. She specialized in Renaissance literature, particularly the city drama of Beaumont and Fletcher, which sympathized with her own urbane and incisive wit, and is the author of four books and numerous articles. She also had an abiding interest in modern drama and a wide-ranging love of music in diverse genres, especially opera. In her retirement, she continued to be a voracious reader, as well as taking great pleasure in volunteer work at CALM and ASAP and exploring the cooking of world cuisines. She is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, John and Dixie Bliss, and will be dearly missed by her students, colleagues, and friends. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to CALM, ASAP, or the Early Modern Center of the English Department, UCSB.

Lee Bliss

Lee Bliss | Ph.D., U. California at Berkeley, 1972
Professor, English Department
U. California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3170
tel: (805) 893-3020
fax: (805) 893-4622
email: lbliss@english.ucsb.edu

Areas of Interest

Renaissance Literature
Shakespearean and Non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama
Modern drama

Publications

Full List of Research Activities

The World’s Perspective: John Webster and the Jacobean Drama (Rutgers University Press, 1983)
Francis Beaumont (Twayne, 1987)
Coriolanus, ed. Lee Bliss, New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Articles on Shakespeare, Webster, Chapman, Beaumont, Fletcher, Renaissance dramatic genres, sixteenth- and seventeenth- century retellings of the Griselda story, and a bibliographical study of the Shakespeare First Folio text of Coriolanus

Recent Courses Taught

Renaissance Drama
Shakespeare
Modern Drama
Contemporary American Drama