Hamnet

Acknowledgements

Thank you, Mary-Anne Harrington.

Thank you, Victoria Hobbs.

Thank you, Jordan Pavlin.

Thank you, Georgina Moore.

Thank you, Hazel Orme, Yeti Lambregts, Amy Perkins, Vicky Abbott, and all at Tinder Press.

Thank you to the staff at Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, and the guides at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, who were unfailingly generous and patient in the face of numerous questions.

Thank you, Bridget O’Farrell, for the loan of a kitchen table.

Thank you, Charlotte Mendelson and Jules Bradbury, for herbal and plant advice.

The following books were invaluable during the writing of this novel: The Herball or General Historie of Plantes by John Gerard, 1597 (arranged by Marcus Woodward, Bodley Head, 1927); Shakespeare’s Restless World by Neil McGregor (Allen Lane, 2012); A Shakespeare Botanical by Margaret Willes (Bodleian Library, 2015); The Book of Faulconrie or Hauking by George Turberville (London, 1575); Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer (Bloomsbury, 2007); Shakespeare by Bill Bryson (Harper Press, 2007); Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (Vintage, 2006); How to Be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman (Penguin, 2015); 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (Faber & Faber, 2005); and the website Shakespeare Documented, shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/​.

Special thanks are due to Mr. Henderson, in whose English class, in 1989, I first heard about the existence of Hamnet. I hope he will rate this book as “not bad.”

Thank you, SS, IZ and JA.

And thank you, Will Sutcliffe, for everything.