Shakespeare
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4.3 • 86 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
International bestseller Bill Bryson brings us this brilliantly readable biography of the world’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare.
Join Bill as he takes you on a journey through Elizabethan England, tackling the myths, half-truths and downright lies to make sense of the man behind the masterpieces.
Revel in this glorious celebration of the life of Shakespeare from the much-loved author of ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ and ‘Notes from a Small Island’.
Reviews
‘Fresh, concise and sharply illuminating. Bryson is brilliant at picking out just a few telltale details to paint a bigger picture . . . A gem of a book’ Mail on Sunday
‘Witty and infectiously enthusiastic.’ Spectator
'A brilliantly funny and gently insightful travel guide to 16th century England. Bryson is great at picking out of the morass of Elizabethan fact the small details that illuminate and amuse…he also uncovers from the world that surrounded the theatre some fascinating examples of Elizabethan eccentricity…As an abbreviated tour around the world of Shakespeare, this could hardly be bettered.' Sunday Times
‘Bryson uses an inimitably light touch and squeezes a vast subject down to manageable proportions…he is a warm and funny guide through the whole complicated morass of Shakespearean scholarship.’ Financial Times
About the author
Bill Bryson's internationally bestselling books include ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize), ‘A Walk in the Woods’, ‘Neither Here Nor There’, ‘Made in America’, ‘Notes from a Small Island’, ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’ and, most recently, ‘At Home’. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, he now lives in Norfolk with his wife and four children.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Considering the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written about Shakespeare, relatively little is known about the man himself. In the absence of much documentation about his life, we have the plays and poetry he wrote. In this addition to the Eminent Lives series, bestselling author Bryson (The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid) does what he does best: marshaling the usual little facts that others might overlook for example, that in Shakespeare's day perhaps 40% of women were pregnant when they got married to paint a portrait of the world in which the Bard lived and prospered. Bryson's curiosity serves him well, as he delves into subjects as diverse as the reliability of the extant images of Shakespeare, a brief history of the theater in England and the continuing debates about whether William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon really wrote Shakespeare's works. Bryson is a pleasant and funny guide to a subject at once overexposed and elusive as Bryson puts it, "he is a kind of literary equivalent of an electron forever there and not there."
Customer Reviews
I’m still waiting to be disappointed by a Bryson book
Another Bryson masterpiece. Witty, illuminating and compelling. I was constantly amazed at the depth of research. I learned so much and loved every minute.
Gilbert Ham
Bill Bryson is a wordsmith without an equal
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