William Edward Farina | |
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 William Farina | |
| Born | December 7, 1955 LaPorte, Indiana, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author, essayist |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Valparaiso University (JD) |
| Genre | Popular Non-Fiction |
William Edward Farina (born December 7, 1955 in LaPorte, Indiana) is an American essayist and writer of popular non-fiction.
Farina was born, reared and educated in LaPorte, Indiana. He attended Valparaiso University on a baseball athletic scholarship and received his bachelor's degree with a double major in English and Philosophy in 1978, then a J.D. degree from the same institution in 1981. That same year he was admitted to the Illinois bar and moved to Chicago, pursuing a full-time career as a real estate analyst that had previously begun in college. In 1989, he was awarded designated membership with the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers (today the Appraisal Institute). The following year (1990), Farina was presented with a certificate of merit from Landmarks Illinois for his efforts in the field of historic building preservation. Soon afterwards in 1991, he married Marion Buckley of Decatur, Illinois, who helped to rekindle his interest in writing. Then in 2002, he accepted invitational membership with Lambda Alpha International, an honorary land economics society.
Farina and his wife participated as volunteers for the 2008 general election campaign in his native state of Indiana. Soon after this in 2009, they moved to northern Wisconsin, where they spent the next six years serving in various government-related capacities, before moving back to the Chicago area (Evanston, Illinois) in 2015, where they live and work today.
Broad contrasts in ethnic and cultural identities frequently characterize his writing style.
Spurred by the results of the 2004 elections, Farina resolved to devote spare time to educational activities. Foremost among these has been a series of books on various scholarly topics, written from a layman's perspective. Farina's first collection, "De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon" (McFarland & Company, 2006), addresses the Shakespeare authorship question. It won the 2007 Award for Scholarly Excellence presented by the Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference of Concordia University-Portland, and earned praise in Washington State University's Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. Since then, McFarland has published nine additional works by Farina, with an 11th book to be published in 2022, and a 12th currently under contract for 2023.
De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon (2006)
Ulysses S. Grant, 1861-1864: His Rise from Obscurity to Military Greatness (2007)
Perpetua of Carthage: Portrait of a Third-Century Martyr (2008)
Chrétien de Troyes and the Dawn of Arthurian Romance (2010)
Eliot Asinof and the Truth of the Game: A Critical Study of the Baseball Writings (2011)
The German Cabaret Legacy in American Popular Music (2013)
Man Writes Dog: Canine Themes in Literature, Law and Folklore (2014)
The Afterlife of Adam Smith: The Influence, Interpretation and Misinterpretation of His Economic Philosophy (2015)
Saint James the Greater in History, Art and Culture (2018)
Italian Crime Fiction in the Era of the Anti-Mafia Movement (2020)
Screening Charles Dickens: A Survey of the Film and Television Adaptations (2022 scheduled)
"Patient readers will hopefully have as much fun perusing this survey as I had assembling it. Since Smith is rarely read by anyone nowadays, and wrote during an epoch so completely different from our own, specific interpretations of his text and attempts at direct application of his ideas to contemporary problems often become a freewheeling, unaccountable business." (The Afterlife of Adam Smith)
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The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship contends that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. While historians and literary scholars overwhelmingly reject alternative authorship candidates, including Oxford, public interest in the Oxfordian theory continues. Since the 1920s, the Oxfordian theory has been the most popular alternative Shakespeare authorship theory.
Irvin Leigh Matus was an independent scholar, autodidact, and author. He is best known as an authority on Shakespeare, but also wrote about aspects of Brooklyn's history such as the Vitagraph Studios, and developed a method of modelling baseball statistics. He was a scholar-in-residence at Shepherd University for the academic year 1992-1993. He was based in Washington, DC.
John Thomas Looney (luni) was an English school teacher who is notable for having originated the Oxfordian theory, which claims that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604) was the true author of Shakespeare's plays.
Charles Francis Topham de Vere Beauclerk, also styled Earl of Burford by courtesy, is a British aristocrat and heir to the peerage title of Duke of St Albans.
Margo Anderson, formerly Mark Anderson, is an American journalist and book author.
Charlton Ogburn Jr. was an American writer, most notably of memoirs and non-fiction works. Before he established himself as a writer he served in the US army, and then as a State Department official, specialising in South-East Asian affairs.
The Shakespeare Fellowship was the name used by an organisation devoted to the Shakespeare authorship question. Originally it sought to represent all alternatives to the mainstream consensus that William Shakespeare authored the plays attributed to him, but it later became strongly identified with Oxfordian theory: promoting Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true author of the works of Shakespeare. The original organisation is now known as "The Shakespearean Authorship Trust".
The Prince Tudor theory is a variant of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, which asserts that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the works published under the name of William Shakespeare. The Prince Tudor variant holds that Oxford and Queen Elizabeth I were lovers and had a child who was raised as Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. The theory followed earlier arguments that Francis Bacon was a son of the queen. A later version of the theory, known as "Prince Tudor II" states that Oxford was himself a son of the queen, and thus the father of his own half-brother.
Charles Wisner Barrell was an American writer. He first became significant as an art critic, promoting realism. He later built a career as an early exponent of public relations and as a documentary film maker.
The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt is an Internet signing petition which seeks to enlist broad public support for the Shakespeare authorship question to be accepted as a legitimate field of academic inquiry. The petition was presented to William Leahy of Brunel University by the actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance on 8 September 2007 in Chichester, England, after the final matinee of the play I Am Shakespeare on the topic of the bard's identity, featuring Rylance in the title role. As of 23 April 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death and the original self-imposed deadline, the document had been signed by 3,348 people, including 573 self-described current and former academics. As of December 2022, the count stood at 5,128 total signatures.
Note: In compliance with the accepted terminology used within the Shakespeare authorship question, this article uses the term "Stratfordian" to refer to the position that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the primary author of the plays and poems traditionally attributed to him. The term "anti-Stratfordian" is used to refer to the theory that some other author, or authors, wrote the works.
Charlton Greenwood Ogburn was a lawyer who served as a public official in various capacities from 1917 through to the 1930s. He was employed as legal counsel both for government bureaucracies and labor organizations. His most widely recognized work was undertaken as counsel for the American Federation of Labor in the 1930s.
Richard Hunt was born in Gloucestershire in 1596, the son of a cleric, and died in February 1661. He is primarily noted for his connection to William Shakespeare.
The Derbyite theory of Shakespeare authorship is the view that William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby (1561–1642), was the true author of the works of William Shakespeare. Derby is one of several individuals who have been claimed by advocates of the Shakespeare authorship question to be the true author of Shakespeare's works.
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.
Roger A. Stritmatter is a Professor of Humanities at Coppin State University and the former general editor of Brief Chronicles, a delayed open access journal covering the Shakespeare authorship question from 2009 to 2016. He was a founder of the modern Shakespeare Fellowship, an organization that promotes Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true author of the works of William Shakespeare. He is one of the leading modern-day advocates of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, and has been called the “first professional Oxfordian scholar”.
Percy Allen (1875–1959) was an English journalist, writer and lecturer most notable for his advocacy of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, and particularly for his creation of Prince Tudor theory, which claimed that the Earl of Oxford fathered a child with Queen Elizabeth I.
Bernard Mordaunt Ward was a British author and third-generation soldier most noted for his support of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship and writing the first documentary biography of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
