{"title":"James Shapiro","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into Shakespearean England with James Shapiro, a master of historical insight. Explore the life, times, and enduring impact of the Bard through insightful biographies and cultural studies. Start your literary journey here.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"1599-a-year-in-the-life-of-william-shakespeare-book-james-shapiro-9780571214815","title":"1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare","description":"Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Baillie Gifford 'Winner of Winners' award in 2023  How did Shakespeare go from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this one exhilarating year we follow what he reads and writes, what he saw and who he worked with as he invests in the new Globe theatre and creates four of his most famous plays - Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet.  This book brings the news, intrigue and flavour of the times together with wonderful detail about how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman and playwright, to create an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.  'A brilliant study, which carefully unpacks a single year in Shakespeare's life ... The audacious focus on just one year pays off magnificently.' Sunday Times  'A far richer, more intimate portrait of our greatest author than you're likely to find in any cradle-to-grave biography.' Daily Mail  'Gripping and illuminating.' Telegraph  'A fascinating and entirely believable portrait of a talented workaholic ... Shapiro's informed enthusiasm and energetic prose is addictive.' 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Since then dozens of rival candidates - including The Earl of Oxford, Sir Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe - have been proposed as their true author. Contested Will unravels the mystery of when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote the plays (among them such leading writers and artists as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, and Sir Derek Jacobi)  Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro's fascinating search for the source of this controversy retraces a path strewn with fabricated documents, calls for trials, false claimants, concealed identity, bald-faced deception and a failure to grasp what could not be imagined. If Contested Will does not end the authorship question once and for all, it will nonetheless irrevocably change the nature of the debate by confronting what's really contested: are the plays and poems of Shakespeare autobiographical, and if so, do they hold the key to the question of who wrote them.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49508905189649,"sku":"GOR002585194","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49628620718353,"sku":"GOR005637002","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49728617971985,"sku":"NGR9780571235773","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50298501464337,"sku":"CIN0571235778G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50459371471121,"sku":"GOR004088507","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50808890982673,"sku":"CIN0571235778VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0571235778.jpg?v=1771500182"},{"product_id":"contested-will-book-james-shapiro-9780571235766","title":"Contested Will","description":"For two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, no one thought to argue that somebody else had written his plays. 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Contributions come from a remarkable range of American writers and statesmen, from Emerson, Melville, Lincoln and Twain to John Berryman, Cynthia Ozick and Bill Clinton (who wrote a foreword).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49513264414993,"sku":"CIN1598534629G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49616222257425,"sku":"GOR013694383","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51389121462545,"sku":"GOR014251094","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52373657813265,"sku":"GOR009894760","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53478302712081,"sku":"GOR014940214","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1598534629.jpg?v=1751428873"},{"product_id":"1606-book-james-shapiro-9780571235797","title":"1606","description":"1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear traces Shakespeare's life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, The Chronicle History of King Leir, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, King Lear.  1606 proved to be an especially grim year for England, which witnessed the bloody aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, divisions over the Union of England and Scotland, and an outbreak of plague.  But it turned out to be an exceptional one for Shakespeare, unrivalled at identifying the fault-lines of his cultural moment, who before the year was out went on to complete two other great Jacobean tragedies that spoke directly to these fraught times: Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.  Following the biographical style of 1599, a way of thinking and writing that Shapiro has made his own, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear promises to be one of the most significant and accessible works on Shakespeare in the decade to come","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49515746951441,"sku":"GOR007462415","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49660346007825,"sku":"GOR007639857","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49728558301457,"sku":"NGR9780571235797","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49951233343761,"sku":"CIN0571235794G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50175152554257,"sku":"GOR012948608","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50357173715217,"sku":"CIN0571235794VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52109019906321,"sku":"GOR009338478","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52587319165201,"sku":"NLS9780571235797","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0571235794.jpg?v=1771503741"},{"product_id":"year-in-the-life-of-william-shakespeare-book-james-shapiro-9780060088736","title":"A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eWhat accounts for Shakespeare's transformation from talented poet and playwright to one of the greatest writers who ever lived? 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