William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, to an alderman and a successful glover-maker. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor and a writer. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s best dramatist. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are still being studied and reinterpreted. Several of his most celebrated works like, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth and Hamlet are to this day still being performed all around the world. Altogether Shakespeare’s works include 38 plays, 2 narrative poems, 154 sonnets, and a variety of other poems. However, no original manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays are known to exist today. It is thanks to a group of actors from Shakespeare’s company that we have about half of the plays at all. They collected them for publication after Shakespeare died, preserving the plays. The conception and design behind our bookends stem from Swedish renowned industrial designer, Jan Landqvist and are made in the small town of Gnosjö in the south of Sweden.