30-Second Shakespeare: 50 Key Aspects of his Works, Life and Legacy, each explained in Half a Minute

by Ros Barber, Mark Rylance

The bestselling 30-Second series takes a revolutionary approach to learning about those subjects you feel you should really understand. Each title selects a popular topic and dissects it into the 50 most significant ideas at its heart. Every idea, no matter how complex, is explained in 300 words and one image, all digestible in just 30 seconds. 30-Second Shakespeare uses this unique approach to grapple with the worlds most famous playwright. From what we know of his life and the intrigue of the authorship question, to uncoding the meanings of key concepts, themes and motifs, and the Bards extraordinary enduring literary and linguistic legacy.

219 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 24, 2015

About the author

Novelist, both historical and speculative fiction. Debut novel The Marlowe Papers (2012) was winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2013, joint winner of the Author's Club Best First Novel Award 2013, long-listed for the 2013 Women's Fiction Prize (formerly the Orange Prize).

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Second novel, Devotion (2015) was short-listed for the Encore Award 2015.

📕📕📕Third novel: an epic adventure, currently (spring 2024) being edited.


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Non-fiction: literary history/biography, specialising in Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Editor and co-author of 30-Second Shakespeare (UK) / Know-it-All Shakespeare (US). Author of Shakespeare: The Evidence and the Coursera MOOC Introduction to Who Wrote Shakespeare.

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Poetry. A collection of poems, Material (2008) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The title poem features in Faber's Poems of the Decade and is taught in schools in the UK.

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