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This volume in the Writers Lives series offers a reassessment of Shakespeare and his creative output from his earliest work through his ''mature'' drama and the late plays, taking into account our current knowledge of Shakespeare''s biography and consensus on key textual, critical and theatrical issues. William Baker offers a comprehensive but accessible introduction to Shakespeare''s work and places it in the contexts of what is known of his life and activities. Avoiding speculation of a biographical, critical or textual nature, he focuses instead on an account of what is known of Shakespeare and his achievement at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.>
About the author
William Baker is Distinguished Chair Qiantang River Professor, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, PRChina and Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Northern Illinois University, USA. Co-Editor, Year's Work in English Studies, he is the author/editor of numerous books: his co-authored Harold Pinter: A Bibliographical History and The Letters of Wilkie Collins were honoured by Choice as the year's most outstanding books (2006 and 2000). The author of numerous articles on Shakespeare, including his William Shakespeare (2009), translated into Chinese. Recent publications include Pinter's World (2018), contributions to Tom Stoppard in Context (2021), and the co-edited Wilkie Collins in Context (2023).