Shakespeare: The Biography

Description: With his magisterial and ingenious re-creations of the lives of Chaucer, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More, Peter Ackroyd has long been recognized as today's foremost practitioner of the literary biography. Now, in "Shakespeare: The Biography," Ackroyd delivers his crowning achievement.

Review Quotes: "Demystifies the man and the artist. . . . Expertly evokes the townscape and landscape in and around Stratford, and the corresponding mindscape that vividly merges the urban and the rustic." -The New York Times"William Shakespeare's London comes to life with remarkable immediacy and clarity. . . . Ackroyd's research is impressive."-San Francisco Chronicle"Ackroyd provides the sights and sounds (and smells) of Stratford and London until you'd swear Shakespeare was right at your elbow, sipping ale."-The Philadelphia Inquirer "Captures the thrill of London and of a theater emerging, in a 'hard and disenchanted age, ' to replace the church as the center of communal spectacle."-The Wall Street Journal"Creates a tapestry of Elizabethan London so rich that you feel you've been there." -Independent on Sunday