Yea the illiterate, that know not how
To cipher what is writ in learned books
The Rape of Lucrece, lines 861-62
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Not everyone owns books. I won’t mention any names. I have a library full. Here are some that I think worthy of mention. No particular order.
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Shakespeare and Authorship:
• Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: A Critical Review of the Evidence [parapresspublishing.co.uk]
· Edited by Kevin Gilvary
· Parapress, 2010, paperback, 520 pages
• The Shakepeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard’s Unknown Travels [Google Books]
· by Richard Paul Roe
· HarperCollins, 2011, paperback, 309 pages
This excellent book doesn’t mention my name, but it doesn’t need to if your brain knows how to think for itself. If you believe that the overlaps between what of Italy is in Shakespeare, and where I went and what I did during my residence there in 1575-76, are unrelated and ignorable – while Willy never put so much as a toe in salt water – then thanks for stopping by, and have fun in Warwickshire or Washington.
• Monty Python, Shakespeare, and English Renaissance Drama [mcfarlandbooks.com]
· by Darl Larsen
· McFarland & Co, 2003, paperback, 243 pages
Python is the second-best thing that England has ever produced.
• The Oxfordian [shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org]
· by The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship (@ShakeOxFellows)
· annual journal, various contributors
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Biographies of me:
• “Shakespeare” By Another Name [shakespearebyanothername.com]
· by Mark Anderson (@markawriter)
· Gotham Books/Penguin Group USA, 2005 (hardback), 640 pages
· also paperback, audiobook, and ebook formats
• This Star of England – “William Shake-speare” Man of the Renaissance
· by Dorothy and Charlton (Sr) Ogburn
· Coward-McCann, 1952 (hardback), 1297 pages
· used copies at the usual suspects, varying condition and prices
· Online-readable at the HathiTrust Digital Library [hathitrust.org]. Single-page PDFs downloadable, whole-book PDF requires login.
· First 50 chapters transcribed at sourcetext.com/this-star-of-england/, with the remainder as raw page scans in downloadable chapter PDFs (presumably an unfinished project to transcribe the whole book).
• The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, 1550–1604
· by Bernard M Ward
· John Murray, London, 1928 (hardback), 408 pages
· used 1928 copies or 1979 reprints are hard to find, and very expensive
· a downloadable copy is at the Internet Archive
For more about the Ward biography, as well as J Thomas Looney’s 1920 book “Shakespeare” identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, which re-opened the door to my existence as the Author, see my post Oh Put Me In Thy Bookes.
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Poetry:
• The Life and Death of King Edward [Amazon UK | US]
· by Joshua Gray (@joshuagraypoet)
· Forever Press, April 2017, paperback, 134 pages
· My comments: Book Review: Strong Stuff (28 Sept 2017)
Fiction:
• The Lost Scrapbook / The Easy Chain / Flee [aurora148.com]
· by Evan Dara
· Aurora, 1995/2008/2013, paperbacks, 476/502/239 pages
• License to Quill [us.macmillan.com]
· by Jacopo della Quercia (@Jacopo_della_Q)
· St. Martin’s Griffin, December 2015, paperback, 384 pages
· I take issue with his premise, but it’s a good yarn.
• Cow Country [coweyepress.com]
· by Adrian Jones Pearson
· Cow Eye Press, April 2015, hardback, 540 pages
· also paperback, audiobook, and ebook formats
• A Confederacy of Dunces [wikipedia.com]
· by John Kennedy Toole
· Louisiana State University Press, 1980 (written in 1963)
· numerous reprint editions and formats available at the usual sources
· Ignatius J Reilly is the nearest thing I’ve seen to a modern Falstaff.
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Absent from my desk, not by my choice:
• My Bible – It belongs to me. I want it back.
· printed by John Crispin, Geneva
· MDLXX (1570)
· immured at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, USA
photos courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library
I underlined Revelation 14:13 for a reason.
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VERO NIHIL VERIUS
