Ben Jonson: A Life by Ian Donaldson

JUDGES' COMMENTS

Ian Donaldson has used his privileged position as General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson to amass a startling amount of detail relating to one of the foundational figures of English literature. In this work, surely one of the most expansive yet produced on the playwright and poet, Donaldson successfully draws Jonson out of the shadow of his great contemporary, William Shakespeare.

Using his knowledge of Jonson’s corpus, vividly inhabiting the historical moment through which the man moved, Donaldson argues that Jonson was as crucial as Shakespeare in the formation of English theatre, if not more so. As an act of scholarship, Donaldson’s achievement is considerable; as an act of literary recuperation on behalf of a complex, brilliant and often misunderstood man, Ben Jonson: A Life is peerless.