The Biography And Bibliography Of Shakespeare

Selling Shakespeare tells a story of Shakespeare's life and career in print, a story centered on the people who created, bought, and sold books in the early modern period. The interests and investments of publishers and booksellers have defined our ideas of what is 'Shakespearean', and attending to their interests demonstrates how one version of Shakespearean authorship surpassed the rest. In this book, Adam G. Hooks identifies and examines four pivotal episodes in Shakespeare's life in print: the debut of his narrative poems, the appearance of a series of best-selling plays, the publication of collected editions of his works, and the cataloguing of those works. Hooks also offers a new kind of biographical investigation and historicist criticism, one based not on external life documents, nor on the texts of Shakespeare's works, but on the books that were printed, published, sold, circulated, collected, and catalogued under his name.

No estimate of Shakespeare’s genius can be adequate. In knowledge of human character, in wealth of humour, in depth of passion, in fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judgement, he has no rival.' William Shakespeare was one of the most influential dramatists and poets whose plays are performed more often than those of any other playwright till today. In this work Sidney Lee presents the major facts of Shakespeare’s life and illustrates them with numerous quotes of the sonnets and plays. Sidney Lee was an editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and several English classics. One of his special subjects was the life and work of William Shakespeare.

A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Drawing on an exceptional combination of skills as literary biographer, novelist, and chronicler of London history, Peter Ackroyd surely re-creates the world that shaped Shakespeare--and brings the playwright himself into unusually vivid focus. With characteristic narrative panache, Ackroyd immerses us in sixteenth-century Stratford and the rural landscape–the industry, the animals, even the flowers–that would appear in Shakespeare’s plays. He takes us through Shakespeare’s London neighborhood and the fertile, competitive theater world where he worked as actor and writer. He shows us Shakespeare as a businessman, and as a constant reviser of his writing. In joining these intimate details with profound intuitions about the playwright and his work, Ackroyd has produced an altogether engaging masterpiece.

The Life of William Shakespeare is a fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of Shakespeare's life and works focusing on oftern neglected literary and historical contexts: what Shakespeare read, who he worked with as an author and an actor, and how these various collaborations may have affected his writing. Written by an eminent Shakespearean scholar and experienced theatre reviewer Pays particular attention to Shakespeare's theatrical contemporaries and the ways in which they influenced his writing Offers an intriguing account of the life and work of the great poet-dramatist structured around the idea of memory Explores often neglected literary and historical contexts that illuminate Shakespeare's life and works