Imagining Shakespeare's Wife

Katherine West Scheil is Professor of English at the University of Minnesota. Her previous works have focused on the reception history of Shakespeare, and include The Taste of the Town: Shakespearian Comedy and the Early Eighteenth-Century Theater (2003), Shakespeare, Adaptation, Modern Drama, co-edited with Randall Martin (2011) and She Hath Been Reading: Women and Shakespeare Clubs in America (2012).

'[It is to] Scheil's credit that while she presents and discusses these myriad Annes, she always keeps the reader aware of the true Anne, the one who we cannot know, who is impossible to know, but who deserves to be acknowledged simply because she is human. Highly recommend.' The Fish Shelf (www.fishshelf.blogspot.co.uk)

• Preface; 1. Origins; 2. Forging the Shakespeare marriage: Anne Hathaway in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; 3. The legacy of Anne Hathaway's cottage; Interlude: fact and fiction; 4. 'Fit to marry': early imaginary Annes; 5. Post-war imaginary Annes; 6. Anne Hathaway for a female audience; Conclusion.