Dr Simon Forman
Judith Cook
  • Published: 5 April 2002
  • ISBN: 9780099289623
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

Dr Simon Forman

Formats & editions
EBook
31 Mar 2011
Paperback
5 Apr 2002
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The first full biography of Simon Forman - one of the most extraordinary and colourful personalities of the Elizabethan age.

Simon Forman was one of the most extraordinary personalities of Elizabethan and Jacobean London.
Charismatic, volatile and ambitious, he was doctor to the giants of the theatre and his 'playbook' contains the first eye-witness accounts of Shakespeare's plays. Like most doctors he was also an astrologer, reading the stars for all and sundry.

Constantly on the fringes of great events and court intrigues, his name has been linked with Sir Walter Raleigh's mysterious group, 'the School of Night' and with the notorious Overbury poisoning case, in which the beautiful Countess of Essex was accused of murder.

Also uncovered is Forman's private world, that of a compulsive womaniser who kept a coded diary, never fully deciphered before, a record of promiscuity as colourful as the journals of Pepys and Boswell.
  • Published: 5 April 2002
  • ISBN: 9780099289623
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

About the author

Judith Cook

Judith Cook spent the first part of her career as an investigative journalist. She wrote several non-fiction books on social issues, including an investigation into the death of the anti-nuclear compaigner Hilda Murrell. She was herself a political and anti-nuclear campaigner. She also wrote biographies of Daphne du Maurier and J. B. Priestley, a popular historical fiction series and theatre scripts. She later taught Elizabethan and Jacobean studies at Exeter University. She died in May 2004.

Praise for Dr Simon Forman

Brilliant, written with wit and relish, packed with detail

The Times

Judith Cook writes lucidly about Forman and his idiosyncrasies... Her knowledge of the period is extensive and places this strange and fascinating man convincingly in his dramatic times

Daily Mail

An intriguing and lively study

Independent on Sunday

Her research is thorough and intriguing... Her book enters teh Elizabethan world in media res so that th reader is immediately surrounded by it

The Times