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This may be the most exciting biography you will read in a long time. Freud believed from 1925 until his death that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), probably wrote the works of Shakespeare. Anderson's biography of de Vere will persuade many open-minded readers that Freud may have been correct. Anderson not only carefully reviews the documented facts of de Vere's life; he also shows again and again how those biographical facts parallel and illuminate numerous passages in the works of Shakespeare, including details that were hitherto obscure.
Many of you are probably skeptical at this point. Haven't Shakespeare experts assured us that there is no doubt whatsoever about authorship? Haven't there been many harebrained theories that Shakespeare's works were written by Bacon, Marlowe, or Queen Elizabeth? Is it not the case that only snobs would question Shakespeare's authorship, since they cannot abide the well-established fact that a commoner with little education penned the greatest works of English literature? And aren't those snobs also given to conspiracy theories? Furthermore, the paleographer Alan Nelson published a carefully documented life of de Vere, concluding that de Vere's sometimes abominable character disqualified him as the author of Shakespeare's works.1 And Anderson himself agrees