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Hardcover. Condizione: New. Condizione sovraccoperta: New. 1st Edition. MASTERPIECE: MAGNIFICENT: DEFINITIVE: IMAGINATIVE: VIVID: CAPACIOUS: INSIGHTFUL: IMMERSIVE: NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. 2005) First Printing: NEW mylar-protected beautifully color-illus. jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners & showing orig. $32.50 pub. price at top-right inside-front flyleaf, NEW cover w/ black linen wrapping spine & extending 1.50" onto front & back panels covered in EXCELLENT olive-gray paper w/ titles ELEGANTLY silver-stamped on spine, IMMACULATE text-block exterior w/ cut-page-style "deckle" side-edging, IMPECCABLE burgundy card-stock end-papers, NEW durable perfect binding w/ b-w-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, PRISITNE interior ELEGANTLY printed in Fournier on EXCELLENT unblemished paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.78", 1.04 kg, xvi+572+iv (592) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: In a MAGNIFICENT feat of re-creating 16th-century London & Stratford, bestselling biographer & novelist Peter Ackroyd brings William Shakespeare to life in the manner of a contemporary rather than a biographer. Following his magisterial & ingenious re-creations of the lives of Chaucer, Dickens, T. S. Eliot, William Blake, & Sir Thomas More, Ackroyd delivers his crowning achievement w/ this DEFINITVE & IMAGINATIVE biographical MASTERPIECE. Thousands of books have been written about Shakespeare, but none has borne Ackroyd's unique & accessible stamp. His method is to position the playwright in the context of his world, exploring everything from Stratford's humble town to its fields of wildflowers; discerning influences on the plays from unexpected quarters; & entering London w/ the playwright as modern theater, as we know it, is just beginning to emerge. Writing as though we are observing Shakespeare & his circle of friends, patrons, managers, & fellow actors & writers, Ackroyd is able to see Shakespeare's genius from within, so we feel that Ackroyd the writer merges with Shakespeare the writer, the poet, the man; & thus w/ great sympathy & clarity we experience the way in which Shakespeare worked. Ackroyd has used his skill, his extraordinary knowledge, & his historical intuition to craft this major full-scale book on one of the most towering figures of the English language. * HIGH PRAISE: "Ackroyd brings to his biographical reading the IMAGINATIVE INSIGHTS of a gifted poet & novelist, along w/ the passions of a scholar. VIVID & CAPACIOUS, a study worthy of its subject." -Bryce Christensen, Booklist (Starred Review) "The great strength of Acjkroyd's book is the depth of his IMMERSION in the culture of Shakespeare's age & the sense he gives of Shakespeare as the product of that extraordinary moment in time. His feeling for the role of theater in Elizabethan London, 'a city where dramatic spectacles became the primary means of understanding reality,' seems to come from an impressively wide reading of Shakespeare's dramatic & poetic contemporaries. His judgments about the work itself are sometimes ingenious, occasionally eccentric. Immersion in Ackroyd's biography gives one a feeling that one has lived for a brief time in Shakespeare's world." -Ron Rosenbaum, Publishers Weekly * ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Protean scholar & man-of-letters, PETER ACKROYD is the author of "London: The Biography" & "Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination", acclaimed biographies of T.S. Eliot, Dickens, Blake, & Sir Thomas More, & several successful novels. He has won the Whitbread Book Award for Biography, the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, & the South Bank Award for Literature. He lives in London. * SHIPPING: We custom wrap & label & securely package this superb book for shipment via USPS Media Mail at no charge (or via USPS Priority Mail for a nominal $10.00 fee) within the United States or at our posted rates to international destinations via USPS First Class Airmail (recommended) or USPS Priority Airmail (rates on request).

Hardcover. Condizione: Fine. Condizione sovraccoperta: Fine. 1st American Edition. MAGNIFICENT: NEW hardcover, stated First American Edition w/ full no. line showing 1st printing, new mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp new edges & corners & showing orig. $45.00 publisher's price at top-right of inside-front flyleaf, new cover w/ midnight-chocolate library-durable linen wrapping spine & extending 1.86" onto front & back board panels covered in excellent matching midnight-chocolate paper over-boards cover w/ sharp new edges & corners & w/ titles elegantly silver-stamped on spine, immaculate smooth-cut text-block exterior, superb immaculate end-papers on heavy vellum-style card-stock displaying "London-circa 1800" (front) & "Modern London" (back), new sewn binding w/ tight signatures & yellow-white-checked cloth bands at spine-caps, pristine interior elegantly printed w/ handsome clarity in digitized Fournier on excellent unblemished archival paper * 6.36" x 9.50" x 2.12", 1.38 kg, xxvi+801 (827) pp. * Richly illustrated * ABOUT THE BOOK: "London: The Biography" is the pinnacle of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant obsession w/ the eponymous city. In this unusual & engaging work, Ackroyd brings the reader through time into the city whose institutions & idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction & nonfiction. Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, w/ its own laws of growth & change. Reveling in the city's riches as well as its raucousness, the author traces thematically its growth from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the 21st century. Anecdotal, insightful, & wonderfully entertaining, "London" is animated by Ackroyd's concern for the close relationship between the present & the past, as well as by what he describes as the peculiar "echoic" quality of London, whereby its texture & history actively affect the lives & personalities of its citizens. "London" confirms Ackroyd's status as what one critic has called "our age's greatest London imagination." * HIGHEST PRAISE: "This magnificent evocation of all that London has meant down the centuries. I cannot begin to describe the richness w/ which Ackroyd pursues his theme. A blend of virtuosity & deep affection that is truly bewitching. Ackroyd has performed a noble public service in preserving in these pages so many centuries of marvels, & secrecies." -Jan Morris "Magnificent . . . Succeeds in animating on the page the life of one of the oldest & greatest cities in the world." - The New York Times Book Review * "Ackroyd is the most effortless guide . . . This is much more than history: it is a tapestry of inspiration & love." - The Observer * "An erudite labour of love, a fan-letter to a fabulous city . . . As exuberant, energetic & alarming as the city itself." - Independent on Sunday * "A fat & filling feast: pretty much everything of interest about the capital is crammed into the 800 pages." - The Times * "If London had the ability to choose its biographer it undoubtedly would tap Peter Ackroyd." - Vanity Fair * "A wonderful book, a treasure of information & anecdote about one of the world's great cities, a book to be taken up again & again for the pleasures that lie within." - Chicago Tribune * "A book to match its subject . . . one gratefully rediscovers that urban unreality, the city of romance & mystery as well as the one of shops, pubs, & thoroughfares." - The Washington Post * "Nothing can quite match the huge strange echo-chamber of life-stories, folktales, & urban myths conjured up in Peter Ackroyd's epic vision of his native city. Sparkling, witty scholarship is constantly transformed into smoky-mystical street-history, w/ dark hymnotic meditations on fog, fire, sewage, & civic resurrection." - Richard Holmes * Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning best-selling writer of both fiction & non-fiction. His many superb books include the biographies "Dickens", "Blake" & "Thomas More" & the novels "The Trial of Elizabeth Cree", "Milton in America" & "The Plato Papers". He lives, of course, in London.