2026 summer reading guide

Summer reading is one of the season’s great pleasures. We’re sharing a list of fiction and non-fiction books exploring Shakespeare and his world, many from Folger blogs, podcast interviews, and our book club. Happy reading!

The Six Loves of James I
by Gareth Russell

From the assassination of his father to the explosive political and personal intrigues of his reign, discover the passions that drove King James I in this groundbreaking biography that offers a candid exploration of James’s relationships with five prominent men and how it shaped his political decisions and philosophical views on masculinity and sexuality.

Much Ado About Numbers: Shakespeare’s Mathematical Life and Times
by Rob Eastaway

In Shakespeare’s world, math and literature were deeply intertwined. Mathematician Rob Eastaway explores how mathematical thinking shaped Shakespeare’s language and imagination, playing with scores, fractions, and symmetry in works like Othello, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and The Winter’s Tale—even familiar references to nothing, time, and music take on new meaning.

Listen to our podcast interview with Rob Eastaway  |  Read an excerpt

Shakespeare in the Kitchen
by Marissa Nicosia

Shakespeare’s poems and plays record the pleasures and perils of the table. Nicosia, author of the popular Cooking in the Archives blog, asks what Shakespeare’s works can tell us about Renaissance culinary recipes, and what these recipes can tell us about Shakespeare’s works. Each chapter includes an updated historical recipe ready to cook.

A Treacherous Secret Agent: How Literature Spoke Truth To Power During the Red Scare
by Marjorie Garber

A surprising number of English Renaissance artists—William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, John Donne, George Herbert, Francis Bellamy—are mentioned in the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare. Garber writes that the poems, plays, novels, and song lyrics cited in the witness testimony spoke back, offering uncanny counter-testimonies and remarkable acts of “poetic revenge.”

If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation
by Daniel Hahn

Is Shakespeare still Shakespeare even if every word is changed? Translators, writers, and actors from around the world share how they convey the rhythm and spirit of Shakespeare’s words in languages that follow fundamentally different rules. Hahn dives into the infinitesimally complicated ways that Shakespeare is reinvented and yet sounds, somehow, like himself.

Listen to our podcast interview with Daniel Hahn

Shakespeare’s Margaret: The Dramatic Life of a Warrior Queen
by Charles O’Malley and Scott W. Stern

She is the only Shakespearean character whose entire life appears on stage. But who is Margaret of Anjou? In every era, her role is highlighted or diminished depending on the sensibilities of the time. Looking at how Margaret has been portrayed shows theater’s evolution and how Shakespeare’s plays continue to unfold in new ways.

Thinking Through Shakespeare
by David Womersley

Shakespeare’s plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance, from identity to politics and religion to right and wrong. Womersley examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them, especially in the great tragedies.

Listen to our podcast interview with David Womersley  |  Read an excerpt

What’s in a name? How historians know Shakespeare was Shakespeare
by Susan Dwyer Amussen

Readers are transported back to early modern England to travel the path that carried Shakespeare from Stratford to the London stage. Amussen shares what historians know: that Shakespeare’s England was a complex and cosmopolitan place, with everything a talented young playwright needed to develop his craft and furnish his imagination.

Shakespeare’s Scholars
by Sean Keilen

Subtitled Three Lessons from the Liberal Arts, Keilen’s book examines three Shakespeare plays with scholars as protagonists—Love’s Labor’s Lost, Hamlet, and The Tempest. In each plays, he traces these characters’ arduous paths to self-knowledge and meaningful connection with others and finds important lessons about humility, wisdom, and self-knowledge instructive for our own times.

Read an excerpt

Fiction picks from the Folger Book Club

Check out the titles that our virtual Book Club will be discussing this summer and fall.

August 13  |  The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Historical fiction set in 19th-century England.

September 3  |  Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons
A prequel to Shakespeare’s greatest love story.

October 1  |  Diavola by Jennifer Thorne
What’s scarier: a destructive Renaissance ghost or a week-long family vacation?

November 5  |  Mona Acts Out by Mischa Berlinski
A Shakespearean actor looks back on her life on Thanksgiving morning.

Learn more about Folger Book Club  |  Buy the books from the Folger Shop

For audiobook fans

Patrick Stewart Performs the Complete Sonnets of William Shakespeare 

During the pandemic, millions watched videos of Sir Patrick reading Shakespeare’s sonnets, a copy of the Folger Shakespeare edition in hand. A new recording offers fresh performances of the poems accompanied by personal reflections, from explorations of a particular word or phrase to insights about the essential message of love at the heart of each sonnet.

Read our Q&A with Sir Patrick Stewart on performing Shakespeare’s sonnets