Shakespeare and the Modern Novel

The Shakespearean novel is undergoing a renaissance as the long prose narrative form becomes reinvigorated through new forms of media such as television, film, and the internet. Shakespeare and the Modern Novel explores the history of the novel as a literary form, suggesting that the form can trace its strongest roots beyond the eighteenth-century work of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson to Shakespeare’s plays. Within this collection, well-established Shakespeare critics demonstrate that the diversity and flexibility of interactions between Shakespeare and the modern novel are very much alive.

Graham Holderness is the author of numerous books on literary criticism, theory, and scholarship, as well as fiction, poetry, and drama. His most recent works include The Faith of William Shakespeare (Lion Books, 2016), Tales from Shakespeare: Creative Collisions (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Re-writing Jesus: Christ in 20th Century Fiction and Film (Bloomsbury, November 2014), and the historical fantasy novel Black and Deep Desires: William Shakespeare Vampire Hunter (Top Hat Books, 2015).