Ben Jonson

Ralph Berry, Contemporary Review It was a brilliant, epoch making, and memorable life superbly served by Ian Donaldson. Jonson earned his fame. This is and will remain the biography to have.

Lisa Gorton, Australian Book Review A rare and valuable achievement. Elegant in style, flexible in approach, and characterised by a tone of intelligent curiosity, it is engaging as well as definitive.

New York Review of Books Deeply researched but happily readable.

New Statesman absorbing biography

Daily Telegraph fascinating portrait...brilliant biography

Sunday Telegraph authoritative and lucid biography

Sunday Times definitive biography of this quarrelsome playwright.

The Guardian The biographical material on Jonson is extraordinarily rich...Donaldson's fine book is stocked with new material

The Guardian exemplary new biography...rich in detail and insights

Sam Leith, Spectator a work of clarity and lucidity, exact in its historical detail, full of new material and ingeniously suggestive in its conjecture and interpretation.

John Carey, Sunday Times Donaldson is ideally placed to write the definitive life, and he has done so.

The Weekly Standard Ian Donaldson has written a splendid life of this extraordinary man, which all claimants to the "tribe of Ben" will savor and prize.

Michael Alexander, The Tablet A learned biography, it cuts a revealing section through the Jacobean Age.

Stanley Wells, New York Review of Books His deep involvement with Jonson scholarship and criticism ... is apparent on every page of his authoritative, elegantly written, and illuminatingly illustrated biography.

R.S White, Parergon. ...one of the best literary biographies written in any era.

<br>Ian Donaldson is Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He has written many books on Jonson and is a General Editor, with David Bevington and Martin Butler, of the forthcoming seven-volume Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. An eminent scholar, Donaldson is a Fellow of the British Academy and past president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.<br>

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS; NOTE ON TEXTS AND DATING; 1. Prologue: The Biographer's Bones; 2. Scotland 1618-1619; 3. Debatable Land 1542-1572; 4. Influences 1572-1588; 5. Conflicts 1588-1592; 6. Entering the Theatre 1594-1597; 7. Saved by the Book 1597-1598; 8. Global Satire 1598-1601; 9. The Wolf's Black Jaw 1601-1603; 10. Scots, Plots, and Panegyrics 1603-1605; 11. Following the Plot 1606-7; 12. Communities 1607-1612; 13. City, Theatre, Court 1610-1612; 14. Travels 1611-1613; 15. Fame 1613-1616; 16. Money 1614-1617; 17. Scholarship 1619-1630; 18. Lateness 1619-1637; 19. Remembrance with Posterity; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS