This 14-volume set contains titles originally published between 1926 and 1992. An eclectic mix, this collection examines Shakespeare’s work from a number of different perspectives, looking at history, language, performance and more it includes references to many of his plays as well as his sonnets.

Returning to Shakespeare addresses two broad areas of Shakespeare criticism: the unity of form and meaning, and the history of the plays’ reception. Originally published in 1989, the collection represents the best of Brian Vickers’ work from the previous fifteen years, in a revised and expanded form. The first part of the book focuses on the connection between a work’s structural or formal properties and our experience of it. A new study of the Sonnets shows how personal relationships are literally embodied in personal pronouns. An essay on Shakespeare’s hypocrites (Richard III, Iago, Macbeth) analyses the uncomfortable intimacy established between them and the audience by means of soliloquies and asides. Another traces the interplay between politics and the family in Coriolanus, two forms of pressure which combine to push the hero outside society. In the second part Professor Vickers examines some key episodes in the history of Shakespeare criticism. One essay reviews the persistence of drastically altered adaptations of Shakespeare on the London stage from the 1690s to the 1830s, due to the conservatism of both theatre managers and audience. Another reconstructs the debate over Hamlet’s character in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, in which the Romantic image of a hero lacking control of his faculties emerged for the first time. This is an important collection by an outstanding Shakespeare critic which will interest specialists and general readers alike.

This is a ten-year supplement to the six volumes already published in the series Index to British Literary Biography, fully indexed for consistency with earlier volumes. The series provides a comprehensive record of the writings that describe and study the history of the printed book in Britain, and works of bibliography and textual criticism from the earliest times. The period covered by this volume was bibliographically very active, witnessing a great renewal of interest in the history of the book. The volume has seven main sections: "General Bibliographies of and Guides to British Literature," "General and Period Bibliography," "Regional Bibliography," "Book Production and Distribution," "Forms, Genres, and Subjects," and "Authors". Complete information about each book or journal article is provided in standard form, and in many instances objective annotations are given, affording additional access to the items through a very detailed index.