Shakespeare’s Family

Charlotte Carmichael Stopes spent years in the archives tracing the people around William Shakespeare, and this 1901 study gathers her findings into one careful account of his ancestors, relatives, and descendants. She gives particular attention to the Arden family on his mother’s side, following the marriages, wills, and property records that connect them to the poet, and she works to clear away the guesses and inventions that earlier writers had passed off as fact. The result reads less like biography than genealogy, patient and closely documented, useful to anyone curious about the ordinary Warwickshire stock that produced an extraordinary writer. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.