With his magisterial and ingenious re-creations of the lives of Chaucer, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More, Peter Ackroyd has long been recognized as today's foremost practitioner of the literary biography. Now, in "Shakespeare: The Biography," Ackroyd delivers his crowning achievement.

A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Drawing on an exceptional combination of skills as literary biographer, novelist, and chronicler of London history, Peter Ackroyd surely re-creates the world that shaped Shakespeare--and brings the playwright himself into unusually vivid focus. With characteristic narrative panache, Ackroyd immerses us in sixteenth-century Stratford and the rural landscape-the industry, the animals, even the flowers-that would appear in Shakespeare's plays. He takes us through Shakespeare's London neighborhood and the fertile, competitive theater world where he worked as actor and writer. He shows us Shakespeare as a businessman, and as a constant reviser of his writing. In joining these intimate details with profound intuitions about the playwright and his work, Ackroyd has produced an altogether engaging masterpiece.