Jonathan Bate

In this illuminating, innovative biography, Jonathan Bate, one of todays most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, has found a fascinating new way to tell the story of the great dramatist. Using the Bards own immortal list of a mans seven ages in As You Like It, Bate deduces the crucial events of Shakespeares life and connects them to his world and work as never before. is unsurpassed artist came to be.

Who was Shakespeare? Why has his writing endured? What makes it so endlessly adaptable to different times and cultures? And how has Shakespeare come to be such a powerful symbol of genius? "The Genius of Shakespeare" is a fascinating biography of the life - and afterlife - of the greatest English poet. Jonathan Bate, one of the world's leading Shakespearean scholars, deftly shows how the legend of Shakespeare's genius was created and sustained, and how it has become a truly global phenomenon.'The best book about Shakespeare for a generation' - Philip Howard, "The Times". 'As brilliant an account of the Bard's iconic universality as you could hope to find' - Michael Billington, "Guardian". 'Absolutely dazzling - illuminates the whole man and the influence he has in our lives' - Simon Callow, "Sunday Express". 'Occupies the territory of biography, literary criticism, theatrical and social history, and a journey across its landscape is one of constant delight and illumination' - Sir Richard Eyre, "Financial Times", Books of the Year.'The theme of this wonderfully written, diverse book is diversity itself, and the range of the essays serves only to confirm the disparate nature of Shakespeare's achievement' - Peter Ackroyd, "The Times". 'The liveliest and most intelligent general book on Shakespeare I have read for a long time' - John Gross, "Sunday Telegraph", Books of the Year.

A dazzling biography of two interwoven, tragic lives: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Highly engaging Go now, read this book THE TIMES For awhile after you quit Keats, Fitzgerald once wrote, All other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming. John Keats died two hundred years ago, in February 1821. F. Scott Fitzgerald defined a decade that began one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age. In this biography, prizewinning author Jonathan Bate recreates these two shining, tragic lives in parallel. Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works from the poets lines, but the two lived with echoing fates: both died young, loved to drink, were plagued by tuberculosis, were haunted by their first love, and wrote into a new decade of release, experimentation and decadence. Luminous and vital, this biography goes through the looking glass to meet afresh two of the greatest and best-known Romantic writers in their twinned centuries.

The most important critical work for decadesBryan Appleyard, Sunday Times In the brilliantly engaging style that characterised The Genius of Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate has written a series of compelling pieces on the link between literature and the environment and why poetry matters in the new millennium. In fascinating detail, Bate explains how words like culture and environment have evolved since the writing of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and the Romantics to the present day.Bate presents his case with an emotional conviction which is almost impossible to resistThe Times Anyone familiar with Bates The Genius of Shakespeare will know how winningly he marries erudition to liveliness John Coldstream, Daily TelegraphI came away from the book deeply grateful for its impassioned song Adam Thorpe, Sunday Telegraph

With an introduction by Simon CallowJudgements about the quality of works of art begin in opinion. But for the last two hundred years only the wilfully perverse (and Tolstoy) have denied the validity of the opinion that Shakespeare was a genius.Who was Shakespeare? Why has his writing endured? And what makes it so endlessly adaptable to different times and cultures? Exploring Shakespeares life, including questions of authorship and autobiography, and charting how his legacy has grown over the centuries, this extraordinary book asks how Shakespeare has come to be such a powerful symbol of genius.Written with lively passion and wit, The Genius of Shakespeare is a fascinating biography of the life - and afterlife - of our greatest poet. Jonathan Bate, one of the worlds leading Shakespearean scholars, has shown how the legend of Shakespeares genius was created and sustained, and how the man himself became a truly global phenomenon.The best modern book on Shakespeare Sir Peter Hall

What distinguished Clare is an unspectacular joy and a love for the inexorable one-thing-after-anotherness of the world Seamus Heaney John Clare (1793-1864) was a great Romantic poet, with a name to rival that of Blake, Byron, Wordsworth or Shelley and a life to match. The poets poet, he has a place in the national pantheon and, more tangibly, a plaque in Westminster Abbeys Poets Corner, unveiled in 1989. Here at last is Clares full story, from his birth in poverty and employment as an agricultural labourer, via his burgeoning promise as a writer cultivated under the gaze of rival patrons and moment of fame, in the company of John Keats, as the toast of literary London, to his final decline into mental illness and the last years of his life, confined in asylums. Clares ringing voice quick-witted, passionate, vulnerable, courageous emerges through extracts from his letters, journals, autobiographical writings and poems, as Jonathan Bate brings this complex man, his revered work and his ribald world, vividly to life.

Enlightening, moving SIR IAN MCKELLEN From the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern lives.The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. How does one survive the death of a loved one, the mess of war, the experience of being schooled, of falling in love, of growing old, of losing your mind? Shakespeares world is never too far different from our own permeated with the same tragedies, the same existential questions and domestic worries. In this extraordinary book, Jonathan Bate brings then and now together. He investigates moments of his own life losses and challenges and asks whether, if you persevere with Shakespeare, he can offer a word of wisdom or a human insight for any time or any crisis. Along the way we meet actors such as Judi Dench and Simon Callow, and writers such as Dr Johnson, John Keats, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, who turned to Shakespeare in their own dark times. This is a personal story about loss, the black dog of depression, unexpected journeys and the very human things that echo through time, resonating with us all at one point or another.

A Times and Sunday Times Best Book of 2020Radical Wordsworth deserves to take its place as the finest modern introduction to his work, life and impact Financial Times Richly repays reading It is hard to think of another poet who has changed our world so much Sunday TimesA dazzling new biography of Wordsworths radical life as a thinker and poetical innovator, published to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth. William Wordsworth wrote the first great poetic autobiography. We owe to him the idea that places of outstanding natural beauty should become what he called a sort of national property. He changed forever the way we think about childhood, about the sense of the self, about our connection to the natural environment, and about the purpose of poetry. He was born among the mountains of the English Lake District. He walked into the French Revolution, had a love affair and an illegitimate child, before witnessing horrific violence in Paris. His friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge was at the core of the Romantic movement. As he retreated from radical politics and into an imaginative world within, his influence would endure as he shaped the ideas of thinkers, writers and activists throughout the nineteenth century in both Britain and the United States. This wonderful book opens what Wordsworth called the hiding places of my power. W. H. Auden once wrote that Poetry makes nothing happen. He was wrong. Wordsworths poetry changed the world. Award-winning biographer and critic Jonathan Bate tells the story of how it happened.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE Gripping and at times ineffably sad, this book would be poetic even without the poetry. It will be the standard biography of Ted Hughes for a long time to come Sunday Times Seldom has the life of a writer rattled along with such furious activity A moving, fascinating biography The Times Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He is one of Britains most important poets, a poet of claws and cages: Jaguar, Hawk and Crow. Event and animal are turned to myth in his work. Yet he is also a poet of deep tenderness, of restorative memory steeped in the English literary tradition. A poet of motion and force, of rivers, light and redemption, of beasts in brooding landscapes. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet who has lived, he was also a prolific childrens writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter-writer since John Keats. With his magnetic personality and an insatiable appetite for friendship, for love and for life, he also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron. At the centre of this book is Hughess lifelong quest to come to terms with the suicide of his first wife, Sylvia Plath, the saddest and most infamous moment in the public history of modern poetry. Ted Hughes left behind him a more complete archive of notes and journals than any other major poet, including thousands of pages of drafts, unpublished poems and memorandum books that make up an almost complete record of Hughess inner life, preserved by him for posterity. Renowned scholar Sir Jonathan Bate has spent five years in his archives, unearthing a wealth of new material. Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, his book offers for the first time the full story of Ted Hughess life as it was lived, remembered and reshaped in his art. It is a book that honours, though not uncritically, Ted Hughess poetry and the art of life-writing, approached by his biographer with an honesty answerable to Hughess own.

Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He was one of Britains most important poets, his work infused with myth; a love of nature, conservation, and ecology; of fishing and beasts in brooding landscapes.With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific childrens writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter-writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron. His lifelong quest to come to terms with the suicide of his first wife, Sylvia Plath, is the saddest and most infamous moment in the public history of modern poetry.Hughes left behind a more complete archive of notes and journals than any other major poet, including thousands of pages of drafts, unpublished poems, and memorandum books that make up an almost complete record of Hughess inner life, which he preserved for posterity. Renowned scholar Jonathan Bate has spent five years in the Hughes archives, unearthing a wealth of new material. His book offers, for the first time, the full story of Hughess life as it was lived, remembered, and reshaped in his art. It is a book that honors, though not uncritically, Hughess poetry and the art of life-writing, approached by his biographer with an honesty answerable to Hughess own.

How did plague turn Shakespeare from a jobbing hack into a courtly poet? How did Bottoms dream rewrite the Bible? How did Shakespeares plays lead to the deaths of an earl and a king? And why was he the one dramatist of his generation never to be imprisoned?Weaving a dazzling tapestry of Elizabethan beliefs and obsessions, private passions and political intrigues, Soul of the Age leads us on an exhilarating tour of the extraordinary, colourful and often violent world that shaped and informed Shakespeares thinking. Written by one of the worlds leading experts, it combines almost everything there is to know about the man and his work in one sensational narrative, and brings us closer than ever to understanding what being Shakespeare was actually like.

Crossing continents and cultures from antiquity to the present, The Garden encompasses a global history of the garden, the place where culture and nature converge. The uniqueness of the book will come not only from its global scope the embracing of East and West, English aristocrats and enslaved African Americans but also from its movement between the story of actual gardens and revelations of the importance of gardens in a huge range of great works of literature and art, as well as in key ideas in philosophy and religion. We will meet the great garden designers Ji Cheng in China, Andre le Notre in France, Jefferson in the USA, Humphrey Repton and Gertrude Jekyll in England but we will also range from Gilgamesh to Gethsemane, Eden to the Eden Project, and we will enter the imagined gardens of Shakespeare and Frances Hodgson Burnett, Goethe and Chekhov, Monet and Van Gogh, Confucius and Epicurus, and many, many more.

¿En qué consiste el genio de Shakespeare? ¿Qué tuvode singular este dramaturgo inglés de fines del siglo XVI? El autor busca en esta obar las respuestas a estas preguntas y nos muestra la imagen que nos hemos formado de el, donde se mezclan la realidad con las anecdotas sin separar los hechos documentados de las historias que comenzaron a circular sobre su vida. Jonathan Bate consigue reinventar a Shakespeare una y otra vez, aportando nuevas ideas de forma sensata y significativa. Un libro inteligente, con ingenio y totalmente accesible, cuya lectura se disfruta y a la vez impresiona.