Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies
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Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies by Elizabeth Winkler
A delightful romp through the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him became the greatest taboo in literature and who the Bard might really be.
“An extraordinarily brilliant and scholarly work, written with an unyielding sleuthing instinct and sparkling with pleasurably naughty momentsThis page-turner is mesmerizing.”
—André Aciman, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name
“A fascinating detective story… whose irreverence is part of its appeal.”
—The Guardian
“Elizabeth Winkler is blessed with the clear-eyed wit of a heroine in a Shakespearean comedy. Her undoing of the fools in the forest of the authorship question is iconoclasm As You Like It—joy to behold, lesson for us all.”
—Lewis Lapham, founder of Lapham’s Quarterly
“As a literary-investigative reporter, Elizabeth Winkler… pursues her quarry with tenacity and grips it like a dog with a bone.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Lively…. Winkler is a crackerjack researcher, deftly laying out the myriad questions, arguments and mysteries swirling around Shakespeare.”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“Elizabeth Winkler’s Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies is one of the most engaging, riveting, scholarly, and challenging whodunits anyone with an interest in theater, human psychology, literature, and history can hope to read. Following in the footsteps of Henry James, Mark Twain, Mark Rylance, and innumerable other skeptics, Winkler writes about what has been essentially a centuries old theological dispute about the origins of Shakespeare’s astounding body of work like a Shakespearean drama itself: full of complex characters with false reputations and deceptive appearances.”
—Bessel van der Kolk, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps Score
“No, Elizabeth Winkler doesn’t reveal the true identity of the writer Ruth Bader Ginsburg termed “the literary genius known by the name William Shakespeare.” But she does explain how we’ve wound up with, among an army of others, a republican Shakespeare and a monarchist Shakespeare, a Shakespeare who hated his wife and one who loved his, a Shakespeare who wrote all the plays and a Shakespeare who could not write at all. Along her intrepid way, Winkler charts, with refreshing clarity, the much-contested ground underfoot, studded with flinty convictions, gnarled fictions, and a surprising number of land mines.”
—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary
“Fascinating and often delightful…. Shakespeare Was a Woman may represent something of an “emperor’s-no-clothes” moment for academia.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“A perfect introduction to a world of unbridled passion, retribution, and intrigue—I refer of course to the Shakespeare authorship question. Brilliant and mind-blowing.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of Booth
“A fascinating read. Winkler boldly pushes against traditional boundaries of gender and identity to show that meaning can be constructed in many different ways.”
—Amanda Foreman, PhD, internationally bestselling author of Georgiana
—André Aciman, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name
“A fascinating detective story… whose irreverence is part of its appeal.”
—The Guardian
“Elizabeth Winkler is blessed with the clear-eyed wit of a heroine in a Shakespearean comedy. Her undoing of the fools in the forest of the authorship question is iconoclasm As You Like It—joy to behold, lesson for us all.”
—Lewis Lapham, founder of Lapham’s Quarterly
“As a literary-investigative reporter, Elizabeth Winkler… pursues her quarry with tenacity and grips it like a dog with a bone.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Lively…. Winkler is a crackerjack researcher, deftly laying out the myriad questions, arguments and mysteries swirling around Shakespeare.”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“Elizabeth Winkler’s Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies is one of the most engaging, riveting, scholarly, and challenging whodunits anyone with an interest in theater, human psychology, literature, and history can hope to read. Following in the footsteps of Henry James, Mark Twain, Mark Rylance, and innumerable other skeptics, Winkler writes about what has been essentially a centuries old theological dispute about the origins of Shakespeare’s astounding body of work like a Shakespearean drama itself: full of complex characters with false reputations and deceptive appearances.”
—Bessel van der Kolk, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps Score
“No, Elizabeth Winkler doesn’t reveal the true identity of the writer Ruth Bader Ginsburg termed “the literary genius known by the name William Shakespeare.” But she does explain how we’ve wound up with, among an army of others, a republican Shakespeare and a monarchist Shakespeare, a Shakespeare who hated his wife and one who loved his, a Shakespeare who wrote all the plays and a Shakespeare who could not write at all. Along her intrepid way, Winkler charts, with refreshing clarity, the much-contested ground underfoot, studded with flinty convictions, gnarled fictions, and a surprising number of land mines.”
—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary
“Fascinating and often delightful…. Shakespeare Was a Woman may represent something of an “emperor’s-no-clothes” moment for academia.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“A perfect introduction to a world of unbridled passion, retribution, and intrigue—I refer of course to the Shakespeare authorship question. Brilliant and mind-blowing.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of Booth
“A fascinating read. Winkler boldly pushes against traditional boundaries of gender and identity to show that meaning can be constructed in many different ways.”
—Amanda Foreman, PhD, internationally bestselling author of Georgiana
Elizabeth Winkler is a journalist and book critic whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Economist, among other publications. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and her master’s in English literature from Stanford University. Her essay “Was Shakespeare a Woman?”, first published in The Atlantic, was selected for The Best American Essays 2020. She lives in Washington, DC.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781982171278 |
| ISBN 10 | 1982171278 |
| Title | Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies |
| Author | Elizabeth Winkler |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Year published | 2024-05-23 |
| Number of pages | 432 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |