Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

Shakespeare:

The World as Stage

by Bill Bryson

Atlas Books, Harper Collins, 2007 [First Edition], ISBN 9780060740221, illustrated title page, hardcover, dust-jacket

Near Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, no inscriptions; dust-jacket shows minor edge and shelf wear (see photographs)

"William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts.  With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.
Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays.  Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research,  including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed."