I really liked this book, because it was packed full of so much information. I used it for an English project on Shakspearen authorship and Francis Bacon played a huge role in Shakespeares life. I will refer this book to anyone.

While the book starts slowly with what seems to be an overly detailed account of Bacon's family and their activities, it is a clear headed and balanced account of a man who achieved fame across the centuries, as well as in his own time---but never great virtue, character or happiness in his own life. It is quite readable, and even engrossing in the second half. Scholars will appreciate the careful documentation and extensive reference to sources and supporting materials.

This is a scholarly work, by a competent historian and excellent writer, the book will get nowhere near the attention and reading it deserves, perhaps explaining why it is out-of-print.

The people who need to read it the most, are perhaps the least likely to read it, the young earth creationists. The author has at least two high level motivations to write this book. The first is to demonstrate specifically how in a particular time and place, early 19thC America, a particular religious group, Old Princeton as heir of Reformation Calvinism, works to tie religion and culture together to solve societal intellectual problems. pg 174 "It may be questioned whether religious leaders at any previous point in the nation's past ahd achievd a more unabashed union of gospel and culture than this."(this referring to the Presbyterian Old School baconist interpretation of both science and religion) Secondly, he desires as a historian to cast light on the thoughts of today by tracing their roots historically and philosophically. "It is therefore feasible to suggest that the most important contemporary echo of Baconian biblicism in not to be heard within Presbyterianism as such, but within the huge party of conservative evangelicalism which has adherents within every denomination and which today perpetuates in varying degrees the essential theological tents of Fundamentalism, including biblical inerrancy." pg 173

We are used to the analogy of religion and science at war, we are less accustomed to the 19thC thinking of the two books of God; special revelation in the words of the Bible, and general revelation in the book of nature, as read by science. The two books, not warfare is the analogy that dominated American religious thought, especially the particular school represented by Princeton, until the rise of Darwinianism in 1870's. The contention that the two books, as written by the same reasonable God could not contradict each other is crucial to the theology as explained in the book. The book develops the theme that a particular way of reading both books, Baconism developed as a reaction to the French Enlightment with its accent on the unfettered by religion rise of man's Reason to explain the world.

The best part of the book is what he calls the doxological relationship of theology to science. pg 78 "More often, religious values were stated explicitly. Edward Everett, as usual, captured the full essence of current conceptions: 'the great end of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author,' Everett considered this 'as the ultimate aim of science.'" Having grown up in a world dominated by materialist science the chapter on doxological science was reason enough to have spent the time reading this book. That our forefather's in the faith, at a crucial time in the development of the relationship of modern science and theology; saw science as anawe-inspiring, devotional subject is a breath of fresh cool air on a world presently seen by science as aloof, uninterested in humankind, random, and downright unfriendly, dominated by forces of impersonality certainly not a loving God.

John Russell wrote this "biography" while Francis Bacon was very much alive and tends to emphasize the influences on Bacon's work more from an environmental standpoint than an art historian view. But to jump into Bacon's raucous life "in medias res" is a gift that now can be savoured, like picking the grapes off the vines that in years to come will become a fine vintage wine. A diversion, and only in black and white reproductions, but a rather important comment in retrospect.

Like many biographies, Russell's work concentrates more on the man's times than on the man himself. While we learn a lot about what was going on around Bacon, what he himself experienced is left unexplored. Granted, Bacon made gathering biographical information very difficult, but I would have appreciated more insightful analysis of Bacon's life and its connections to his work. Overall it is a very good introduction to Bacon's career and total output, and includes a huge number of pictures that make the book extremely valuable as a reference. Unfortunately though, while there are many color reproductions, they are outnumbered by black and white ones that take away from truly experiencing the power of Bacon's work.

Well i really think that Francis Bacon is a great artist. I just stratid reading about his art work and he has so many goos drawings like Henrretta Moraes, and his selft portrait. They are veri nice drawings.So i really think his greatt.

An excellent starting point for Shakespeare-Bacon ciphers is a book by a woman, Elizabeth Wells Gallup, b. 1846, and published in 1901 by the Howard Publishing Company of Detroit, MI. "The bi-literal cypher of Sir Francis Bacon" and reprinted in 1975 by AMS Press, NY. Most of the copyrights of the many such Bacon cipher books written around 1901 are expired, and someone is reprinting these.

Gallup's book references Bacon's description of a code based on a binary number system, which

Bacon described in 1605 in "Advancement of Learning". (De Augmentis Scientiarum). The letter A is represented by aaaaa, B is aaaab, C is aaaba, and so forth. A book could be printed in two slightly different fonts using this scheme, and could conceal any text. This is what Gallup refers to as the "bi-literal cypher". The fonts were supposedly the italics letters. The rest of her book decodes the literature to reveal what allegedly was written. See a photo here: http://www.prs.org/books/book422.htm (shows bi-literal cipher concept)

Gallup further claims that Bacon published under the names of Christopher Marlowe, George Peele, Robert Greene, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and Robert Burton. So she has this entire crew conspiring with Bacon to create a glorious "kingdom" of literature. The printers mark the frontispieces of these books with a stylish letter A in the upper right and left corners of some of these books, to signal the researcher that these are part of the collection.

Actually, most of the book is material she claims to have decoded. The secret text itself!

Bacon supposedly wrote all this to conceal his personal history, namely, that Francis was really Francis Tudor, the morganatic son of Queen Elizabeth I and would have been the rightful heir to the throne. That he was sired by Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, who murdered his wife to be with Elizabeth (a similar theme is in Hamlet, that the wicked uncle murdered Hamlet's father) and that from that alleged marriage came two sons, Francis and Robert Devereux, later the mysterious Earl of Essex.

Francis was allegedly educated as a foster son of Nicholas Bacon and his wife Ann. That at age 16, [quoting Gallup] "Francis discovered the facts of his nativity through the gossip of a Court lady, and in a fit of anger the Queen acknowledged to him her motherhood and his son-ship, and that he was immediately thereafter sent to France, and subsequent action was taken by which he was barred from his succession to the throne." This presumably, as it would have revealed Elizabeth to be a partner in crime in the murder of Leicester's wife. In France, he meets Marguerite, who is supposedly the model for Juliet Capulet. Since Francis was a Tudor, of the dynasty symbolized by the White Rose (War of the Roses), perhaps there was double meaning in "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Gallup arranges all these books in a grand sequence, so that the entire story might be revealed. She explains that there were more than just this one class of cypher, that there is another major work of the early 1900's written by Dr. O.W. Owen, a five-volume set titled "Sir Francis Bacon's Cipher Story". This supposedly used some kind of "word key" system, involving text that appears near the words "nature" "fortune" "honor" "reputation". Owen glued this list of books to a long

strip of canvas, scrolled onto two large rotating spools, so that he could turn from one section of the literature to another, jumping around like hypertext links. It was an incomplete set of these books found in a used bookshop that got me intrigued in this yarn.

So the entire body of Elizabethan literature was to have been written by Bacon and his conspirators, so as to permit his glory to outlive his rivals (Sonnet: "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments... will e'er outlive this rhyme...") and to bring longevity to the English language, and to "shake a spear" at ignorance.

Although Gallup is completely serious about her work, I could not find any evidence whatsoever of its validity. But if you like the literature of the Elizabethan period, this will give you an excuse to read it-- looking for the keys to the lost plays of Shakespeare!

Walter Conrad Arensberg was an important poet in the development of literary cubism. He and Gertrude Stein developed this idiom before classic French modernist Reverdy. This movement was determinative in the development of modern verse. Later representatives include Laura Riding (Jackson), Yvor Winters' early poems, Kenneth Rexroth, and the Objectivists but it's influence certainly is not limited to them. In later life Arensberg devoted his fortune to proving the Baconian Heresy the idea that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's works. This is silly and a complete waste of time. Why then is Arensberg's writings on Francis Bacon in print and not his poems. Damned if I know.

Zagorin has not added much to the great mystery of Francis Bacon. He has written a superficial understanding of the life and as a result left out many salient aspects that would have provided greater insight into Bacon's motivations and philosophy. Save your money on this one and buy a copy of Alfred Dodd's:"Francis Bacon's Personal Life Story"instead.