Jonathan Bate is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick. Among his many books are John Clare: A Biography (Farrar Straus Giroux), which won Britain's two oldest literary prizes, the Hawthomden and the James Tait Black, a best-selling book on Shakespeare for the general reader, The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador, UK and OUP, USA), and a major intellectual biography of Shakespeare in the cultural context of the Elizabethan Age (The Soul of the Age. He is also chief editor of The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works (Macmillan UK/Random House Modern Library USA).
"""While exploring towering works, Bate remins us that literature can also be terrific fun."" - Christopher Hirst. The Independent"