Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Shakespeare’s Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature by Stuart Kells

by
October 2018, no. 405

Shakespeare’s Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature by Stuart Kells

Text Publishing, $34.99 pb, 352 pp, 9781925603774

Shakespeare’s Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature by Stuart Kells

by
October 2018, no. 405

The search for Shakespeare’s library (the books ostensibly owned by Shakespeare but dispersed without a trace after his death) is driven largely by the hope that marginalia, notes, and drafts might provide unfettered access to authorial intention. Inevitably, the missing library turns out to be central to a number of the anti-Stratfordian cases, including Diana Price’s convoluted and ill-informed set of precepts for determining literary credentials, which yields the ludicrous conclusion that ‘Shakespeare’ was a ‘collective conspiracy’. She deems this more likely than the possibility that Shakespeare’s papers once existed but have simply been lost. Stuart Kells, in Shakespeare’s Library: Unlocking the greatest mystery in literature, calls her argument ‘intellectually courageous’. Indeed, to the detriment of his own handling of evidence, Kells devotes an inordinate amount of time to the affectionately dubbed ‘Indiana Jones school of Shakespeare studies, whose adherents continue in their efforts to dig up clues, unravel ciphers and commune with the dead’.

David McInnis reviews 'Shakespeare’s Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature' by Stuart Kells

Shakespeare’s Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature

by Stuart Kells

Text Publishing, $34.99 pb, 352 pp, 9781925603774

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.