Shakspere

Shakspere is a biographical and literary study of William Shakespeare by John Alexander Joyce (1842-1915), the American Civil War officer, poet, and prolific popular writer who served in the Union army and later as an Internal Revenue agent before turning to a long career of magazine and book writing. Joyce produced a series of popular biographies of literary figures including Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Burns alongside his own poetry and memoirs. The Shakspere volume offers Joyce’s account of Shakespeare’s life and works for the general American reader, written in his characteristic enthusiastic style. The book belongs to the wider late nineteenth-century American popular literary biography tradition and is a primary source for the popular American reception of Shakespeare in the period. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.