About this item

The remarkable, ridiculous, rain-soaked story of Shakespeare's Jubilee: the event that established William Shakespeare as the greatest writer of all time.In September 1769, three thousand people descended on Stratford-upon-Avon to celebrate the artistic legacy of the town's most famous son, William Shakespeare. Attendees included the rich and powerful, the fashionable and the curious, eligible ladies and fortune hunters, and a horde of journalists and profiteers. For three days, they paraded through garlanded streets, listened to songs and oratorios, and enjoyed masked balls. It was a unique cultural moment -- a coronation elevating Shakespeare to the throne of genius.Except it was a disaster. The poorly planned Jubilee imposed an army of Londoners on a backwater hamlet peopled by hostile and superstitious locals, unable and unwilling to meet their demands. Even nature refused to behave. Rain fell in sheets, flooding tents and dampening fireworks, and threatening to wash the whole town away.Told from the dual perspectives of David Garrick, who masterminded the Jubilee, and James Boswell, who attended it, What Blest Genius? is rich with humor, gossip, and theatrical intrigue. Recounting the absurd and chaotic glory of those three days in September, Andrew McConnell Stott illuminates the circumstances in which William Shakespeare became a transcendent global icon. 20 black and white illustrations



About the Author

Andrew McConnell Stott

Andrew McConnell Stott likes books, potatoes and crunchy fruit.

He is the author of "Comedy" (Routledge, 2005; 2nd edn, 2014) and "The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi" (Canongate, 2009) , which won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction, the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography, and the George Freedley Memorial Award. Grimaldi was a BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week,' and was named as one of the Guardian's "Books of the Year" for 2010. In 2010-11, he was a Fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

His new book, "The Poet and the Vampyre: The Curse of Byron and the Birth of Literature's Greatest Monsters" (Canongate/Pegasus 2013) , was a best book pick of 2013 for both The Big Issue and The Sunday Times.



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