Series: Wiley Blackwell Critical Biographies

Rosemary Ashton explores the many facets of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's complex personality, by turns poet, critic, thinker, enchanting companion, feckless husband, fabled conversationalist, and guilt-ridden opium addict. Coleridge's personality was strange and fabulous, as well as being deeply flawed. With subtlety and sensitivity, Ashton explores his complex character, demonstrating how Coleridge's writings in verse and prose are especially expressive of...

The Life of William Shakespeare is a fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of Shakespeare's life and works, focusing on often neglected literary and historical contexts: what Shakespeare read, who he worked with as an author and an actor, and how these various collaborations may have affected his writing. Written by an eminent Shakespearean scholar and experienced theatre reviewer, this book pays...

Presents a fresh account of the life history and creative imagination of Jonathan Swift Classic satires such as Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, and A Tale of a Tub express radical positions, yet were written by the most conservative of men. Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin and spent most of his life in Ireland, never traveling outside the British...