Essential Shakespeare

Shakespeare: The Illustrated Edition is an exquisitely illustrated, updated edition of Bill Bryson’s bestselling biography of William Shakespeare that takes the reader on an enthralling tour through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship. With more than 100...

How can we look afresh at Shakespeare as a writer of sonnets? What new light might they shed on his career, personality, and sexuality? Shakespeare wrote sonnets for at least 30 years, not only for himself, for professional reasons, and for those he loved, but also in his plays, as prologues, as epilogues, and as part of their poetic texture.

William Shakespeare, the "Bard of Avon", is the most famous of all English writers. Though he lived and died over 400 years ago, his works remain loved and treasured to this day. Even after all this time, they have lost none of their power nor their beauty: His stories still excite, his words still move, and his characters still seem real and deep and true.