A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

Born in 1851, Andrew Cecil Bradley was an English literary scholar and critic whose reputation rests above all on his work on Shakespeare. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, later taught at Liverpool and Glasgow, and went on to hold the Regius Professorship of English Language and Literature at Oxford.

Bradley became especially famous for Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), a book based on lectures that closely examines Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. It became one of the most widely read works of Shakespeare criticism in the English-speaking world, admired for its clarity, seriousness, and deep attention to the inner lives of the plays' characters.

He was the brother of philosopher F. H. Bradley and remained an important figure in literary studies well into the early 20th century. Even where later critics disagreed with him, his work continued to matter because it showed how powerfully careful, passionate reading could bring Shakespeare's tragedies to life.