William Robertson Davies was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies gladly accepted for himself. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.
The Tragedy of King Lear, often shortened to King Lear, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is loosely based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between his daughters Goneril and Regan, who pay homage to gain favour, feigning love. The King's third daughter, Cordelia, is offered a third of his kingdom also, but refuses to be insincere in her praise and affection. She instead offers the respect of a daughter and is disowned by Lear who seeks flattery. Regan and Goneril subsequently break promises to host Lear and his entourage, so he opts to become homeless and destitute, and goes insane. The French King married to Cordelia then invades Britain to restore order and Lear's rule. In a subplot, Edmund, the illegitimate son of Gloucester, betrays his brother and father. Tragically, Lear, Cordelia and several other main characters die.
Stalky & Co. is a novel by Rudyard Kipling about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of school stories whose three juvenile protagonists display a know-it-all, cynical outlook on patriotism and authority. It was first published in 1899 after the stories had appeared in magazines during the previous two years. It is set at a school dubbed "the College" or "the Coll.", which is based on the actual United Services College that Kipling attended as a boy.
Antonia Forest was the pseudonym of Patricia Giulia Caulfield Kate Rubinstein, an English writer. She wrote 13 books for children, published between 1948 and 1982. Her 10 best-known works concern the doings of the fictional Marlow family. Forest also wrote two historical novels about the Marlows' Elizabethan ancestors.
Anne Shakespeare, commonly known as Anne Hathaway, was the wife of William Shakespeare, an English poet, playwright and actor. They were married in 1582, when Hathaway was 26 years old and Shakespeare was 18. She outlived her husband by seven years. Very little is known about her life beyond a few references in legal documents. Her personality and relationship to Shakespeare have been the subject of much speculation by many historians and writers.
Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington is an English actor, director and writer. Together with director Michael Bogdanov, he founded the English Shakespeare Company in 1986 and was its Joint Artistic Director until 1992. He has written ten books, directed in the UK, US, Romania and Japan, and is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is best known for his role as Moff Jerjerrod in the original Star Wars trilogy film Return of the Jedi.
Leon Garfield FRSL was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for children's historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books and scripted Shakespeare: The Animated Tales for television.
Sir Francis Robert Benson was an English actor-manager. He founded his own company in 1883 and produced all but two of Shakespeare's plays. His thirty-year association with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the annual Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon laid down foundations for the creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company after his death.
William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, and theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children. He died in his home town of Stratford on 23 April 1616, aged 52.
"All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII Line 139. The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the seven ages of man.
Marilyn Singer is an author of children's books in a wide variety of genres, including fiction and non-fiction picture books, juvenile novels and mysteries, young adult fantasies, and poetry. Some of her poems are written as reverso poems.
John Bennett was an American author who is best known for the children's books that he wrote and illustrated. Some of them are anthologies of stories based on black folk tales, especially those drawn from the Gullah culture. He is considered to be a leading figure of the Charleston Renaissance.
The Shakespeare Stealer is a 1998 historical fiction novel by Gary Blackwood. Taking place in the Elizabethan-era England, it recounts the story of Widge, an orphan whose master sends him to steal Hamlet from The Lord Chamberlain's Men. It was an ALA Notable Children's Book in 1999. Blackwood published two sequels, Shakespeare's Scribe (2000) and Shakespeare's Spy (2003).
Reginald Bathurst Birch was an English-American artist and illustrator. He was best known for his depiction of the titular hero of Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1886 novel Little Lord Fauntleroy, which started a craze in juvenile fashion. While his illustrated corpus has eclipsed his other work, he was also an accomplished painter of portraits and landscapes.
Edgar White Burrill was an American critic and lecturer on books and the literary scene who organized the 1920s Literary Vespers series held at Aeolian Hall and Town Hall. Burrill was a major precursor to radio drama with his dramatic radio readings during the 1920s and 1930s, and one of these readings led to a milestone in broadcasting. He was a professor of English at Northwestern University.
Charlotte Brown Carmichael Stopes, also known as C. C. Stopes, was a British scholar, author, and campaigner for women's rights. She also published several books relating to the life and work of William Shakespeare. Her most successful publication was British Freewomen: Their Historical Privilege, a book which influenced and inspired the early twentieth century British women's suffrage movement. She married Henry Stopes, a palaeontologist, brewer and engineer. They produced two daughters, the eldest of whom was Marie Stopes, known for her advocacy of birth control.
The Boy In The Dress is a comedic children's book written by David Walliams and illustrated by Quentin Blake, published in October 2008. It is the first book by Walliams, a comedian best known for the cult BBC show Little Britain. It tells the story of a 14-year-old boy called John and a 12-year-old boy called Dennis who is encouraged by a rebellious friend to cross-dress and the reactions of his family, friends and school. It is aimed at readers aged 8 to 12, and has been adapted into a television film and a musical.
David Stout was a journalist and author of mystery novels, two of which have been turned into TV movies, and of non-fiction about violent crime. For his first novel, Carolina Skeletons, he won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel.
The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Anti-Stratfordians—a collective term for adherents of the various alternative-authorship theories—believe that Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason—usually social rank, state security, or gender—did not want or could not accept public credit. Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe theory, and for the most part acknowledge it only to rebut or disparage the claims.
