1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
by James Shapiro
🏆 Winner of the 2006 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Winner of Winners Prize, which aims to pick out the best nonfiction book of the past 25 years
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare is a brilliant book that brings to life the world Shakespeare lived in, and events taking place around him, in 1599. That was the year Shakespeare finished writing Henry V, wrote Julius Caesar and As You Like It, and made his first draft of Hamlet. 1599 is by James Shapiro, a professor of English at Columbia (You can also read our interview with him about Shakespeare’s life, as he is one of many experts to recommend the best Shakespeare books for us).
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