Reclaiming the Bard’s wife

Poor Anne Hathaway. William Shakespeare didn’t even mention her in his will, leading generations of scholars to deduce that his wife was, at best, insignificant to the great playwright’s life and work.

Germaine Greer begs to differ. From the spelling of her name--Ann, not Anne--to Shakespeare’s treatment of love and marriage in his writings, the 68-year-old author of the ground-breaking "The Female Eunuch" argues persuasively in her forthcoming book that the farmer’s daughter from Stratford-upon-Avon was indeed a force.

Greer’s "Shakespeare’s Wife" will be published Sept. 3 in Britain by Bloomsbury and in spring 2008 in the United States by HarperCollins.

"Making use of exhaustive first-hand research and combining literary-historical techniques with extensive documentary evidence, Greer presents a contentious, yet convincingly argued set of hypotheses about the wife of William Shakespeare," Bloomsbury editor Digby Halsby writes.

"The much-wronged Ann Hathaway finds her rightful place in history, thanks to Germaine Greer’s fascinating reconstruction of her life, and the daily lives of Elizabethan women," says  Terry Karsten, executive editor and senior vice present for HarperCollins.

Kristina Lindgren