A fascinating account of how Shakespeare's works were understood and valued by readers and writers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, before Shakespeare's biography came to dominate readings of his plays and poetry. For almost two centuries after his death, Shakespeare had no biography. The makings of one were not available. No chronology had been devised by which to coordinate the events in his life with the writing of his works. Nor was there an archive of primary materials on which to base a life. And the only work by Shakespeare written in the first person, the Sonnets, had yet to be critically edited and incorporated into the canon. Without a biography, how could Shakespeare have been valued and understood? In Shakespeare without a Life, Margreta de Grazia looks at aspects of Shakespeare's reception between 1600 and 1800 that have been all but lost to the now still prevailing biographical impulse. It recovers the anecdote as a form of literary criticism, retrieves the ancient category of genre as the canon's organizing rubric, demonstrates how the quest for authentic documents invalidated other forms of literary record, and reveals how the desire to forge connections between Shakespeare's life and the Sonnets occluded his self-presentation as the 'deceased I' of a posthumous poet.

About the Author
Margreta de Grazia is Emerita Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor of the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Shakespeare Verbatim (Oxford University Press, 1991), 'Hamlet' without Hamlet (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Four Shakespearean Period Pieces (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

Reviews
[A] significant new contribution ...that push[es] the parameters of how we engage with the most revered writer in the English language...timely and erudite. * Lubaaba Al-Azami, History Today *
As de Grazia's study demonstrates so compellingly, when life writing shifted from the anecdotal to the documentary, we lost something of our appreciation of Shakespeare as critics tried to force square pegs into round holes. * David McInnis, Australian Book Review *
De Grazia's Shakespeare without a Life is unafraid of taking a bold stance .... Her subtle analyses highlight the differences between modern readers' obsession with biography and the lenses through which Shakespeare's contemporaries and immediate successors viewed him. * Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal *
Elegant ... what de Grazia does with familiar material is striking. * Emma Smith, Times Literary Supplement *
This beautifully written book weaves together a set of absorbing stories which together produce a sharp-edged argument ... The final chapter on the Sonnets ...urges new ways of thinking about Shakespeare and his work... A pleasure to read and a book to rethink often. * Raphael Lyne, Review in English Studies *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198812548
Author Margreta de Grazia
Format Hardback
Page Count 192
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Dimensions(mm) 223mm * 140mm * 18mm