Greenblatt was born in Boston and raised in Newton, Massachusetts. Life and career Ever since I was quite young I’ve been fascinated by the idea that something would hit you - not just that you would find something, but that something would find you.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2012 and the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2011 for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. His most popular work is Will in the World, a biography of Shakespeare that was on The New York Times Best Seller list for nine weeks. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural journal Representations, which often publishes articles by new historicists. Greenblatt has written and edited numerous books and articles relevant to new historicism, the study of culture, Renaissance studies and Shakespeare studies and is considered to be an expert in these fields. Greenblatt is one of the founders of new historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as 'cultural poetics' his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term. Greenblatt is the general editor of The Norton Shakespeare (2015) and the general editor and a contributor to The Norton Anthology of English Literature.

He has served as the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University since 2000. Stephen Jay Greenblatt (born November 7, 1943) is an American Shakespearean, literary historian, and author. National Book Award for Nonfiction, Pulitzer Prize New Historicism, Shakespeare, Renaissance

Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt