Besides being a great actor and the friend and associate of Dickens, Bulwer Lytton, Browning, and most of the principal figures in the drama and literature of his time, William Charles Macready (1793-1873) was a compulsive diarist. His journal of twenty-one years, during most of which he was at the head of the English stage, is a candid and absorbing self-revelation.
One of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year • A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • A New York Times Notable Book A timely exploration of what Shakespeare’s plays reveal about our divided land. “In this sprightly and enthralling book . . . Shapiro amply demonstrates [that] for Americans the politics of Shakespeare are not confined to the public realm, but have enormous relevance in the sphere of private life.” —The Guardian (London) The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes—presidents and activists, soldiers and writers, conservatives and liberals alike—have turned to Shakespeare’s works to explore the nation’s fault lines. In a narrative arching from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned. From Abraham Lincoln’s and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth’s, competing Shakespeare obsessions to the 2017 controversy over the staging of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated, Shakespeare in a Divided America reveals how no writer has been more embraced, more weaponized, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history.
This bibliography of more than three thousand entries, often extensively annotated, lists books and pamphlets that illuminate evolving British views on the United States during a period of great change on both sides of the Atlantic. Subjects addressed in various decades include slavery and abolitionism, women's rights, the Civil War, organized labor, economic, cultural, and social behavior, political and religious movements, and the "American" character in general.
"In 1875, two years after Macready's death, his Reminiscences and selections from his diaries and letters, edited by the late Sir W. F. Pollock, bart., were published by Messrs. Macmillan. At that time it was thought desirable to withhold a considerable portion of the diaries, but after the lapse of nearly forty years the reasons for this suppression no longer hold good, and the most important of the omitted passages are accordingly given, for the first time, in the present work." --v.1, pref.
Features actors who were significant in their development of new and innovative ways of performing Shakespeare. This title contains extracts from diaries, memoirs, private letters, and obituaries that present a contemporary account of their acting achievements and personal lives.
Presents the candid diary of Thomas Macaulay, Victorian statesman, historian and author of "The History of England". This work shows how, spanning the period 1838 to 1859, the journal is the longest work from Macaulay's pen. It states that these unique manuscripts held at Trinity College, Cambridge, are most revealing of all his writings. Volume 1 includes an Introduction and entries for 20 October 1838–12 June 1840.
