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Delia Bacon

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Author

The Resume

    (February 2, 1811-September 2, 1859)
    Born in Tallmadge, Ohio
    Wrote ‘The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded’ (1857)
    First to publicly claim that Shakespeare’s plays were not written by William Shakespeare
    Claimed the plays were actually written by a committee headed by Sir Francis Bacon to advance their political philosophy

Why she might be annoying:

    No serious Shakespearean scholar buys her theory.
    When she explained her ideas to historian Thomas Carlyle, he laughed in her face.
    The ‘Bacon was Shakespeare’ argument rests on the elitist view that a ‘commoner’ could not have produced great literature.
    She called Shakespeare ‘a vulgar, illiterate deer poacher’ and ‘Lord Leicester’s stableboy.’
    Her prose is often indecipherable, with one critic writing, ‘Reading it is very much like slogging waist-deep through a sea of sludge.’
    A year after publishing her views on Shakespeare, she was sent to an insane asylum.

Why she might not be annoying:

    Despite the last names, she was not related to Sir Francis.
    She beat Edgar Alan Poe to win a short-story contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Sunday Courier (1832).
    Ralph Waldo Emerson said she and Walt Whitman were the only important literary figures that America produced in the 1850s.
    Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the introduction to her book (albeit, while carefully avoiding giving an opinion on her theories).
    Critics used her stint in the asylum as an excuse to dismiss her theory without addressing it.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 13 Votes: 84.62% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 40 Votes: 90.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 7 Votes: 100% Annoying