Trudi Darby is Honorary Research Fellow in the Humanities Research Centres at King's College and is one of the College's Deputy College Secretaries with responsibilities for academic policy and planning. She graduated from the English Department at King's in 1978 and went on to take a PhD there under the supervision of Richard Proudfoot, for which she edited a critical, old-spelling edition of the Jacobean play A New Wonder, A Woman Never Vexed by William Rowley. After a period at Bedford College (University of London), she returned to King's to work in the administration in 1983 and, with Barry Ife, set up the School of Humanities in 1989.

Trudi's first interests were in the textual bibliography of books from the hand-press era, on which she published a joint article with Robin Dix (University of Durham) in 1993, and in the theatre of the reign of James VI and I (1603-1625). While working on William Rowley, she became interested in his use of Spanish sources, and since the early 1990s has been learning Spanish in order to work on texts from early-modern Spain. She is particularly interested in the transfer of Spanish prose fiction to the Jacobean stage, and has concentrated on the use made by Jacobean playwrights of the works of Cervantes, especially the novelas ejemplares. She has given conference presentations on this topic, which she aims to pull together in a monograph on Spain on the Stage, and she is also collaborating with Barry Ife on a modern-spelling edition of The Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda. A Northern History, a translation made in 1619 of Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. In May 2003 she will be speaking on Thomas Middleton's play A Game at Chess at a conference at the University of Warwick, 1623: The Journey of Prince Charles to Madrid to negotiate marriage with the Spanish Infanta, and his return to London.

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