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Published Nov 2007
208 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.
"A telling glance at one of history's most famously unknowable figures ... Shakespeare redux for the common reader." - Kirkus Reviews.
"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." - Publishers Weekly.
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Photo © Bath & North East Somerset Council
Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He moved to England, where he worked for The Times and The Independent, and wrote for many major British and American publications.
Bill Bryson's bestselling books include A Walk in the Woods, Notes From a Small Island, In a Sunburned Country, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words, A Short of History of Nearly Everything, which earned him the 2004 Aventis Prize, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. He was chancellor of Durham University, England's third oldest university, from 2005 to 2011, and is an honorary fellow of Britain's Royal Society. Bryson lives in England with his wife and children.
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