Hogarth Shakespeare Books in Order

The Hogarth Shakespeare project brings together contemporary novelists and classic drama. Commissioned by an imprint of a major publisher, the series invites writers to take one of Shakespeare’s plays and reimagine it as a modern novel, with new settings, voices, and points of view.

Instead of producing line‑by‑line updates, each author treats the original play as raw material. Characters may keep their central roles and relationships, but they move through present‑day cities, workplaces, and families. Plots bend to fit modern realities while still echoing the jealousy, ambition, love stories, and power struggles that drove the plays on stage.

The books are designed as stand‑alone reads. You don’t need to know the source play to follow any of the novels, though readers who do often enjoy spotting how a famous speech, scene, or side character has been transformed. There’s no strict reading order either; you can dip in anywhere and pick by favorite author, mood, or underlying play.

Anne Tyler’s contribution, Vinegar Girl, tackles The Taming of the Shrew. She moves the story to present‑day Baltimore and centers it on Kate Battista, a blunt, practical preschool assistant who has somehow ended up running her absent‑minded scientist father’s household and looking after her younger sister. When her father’s brilliant lab assistant faces the loss of his visa, he proposes a marriage of convenience that would solve everyone else’s problems and completely reorder Kate’s life.

Rather than reproducing the harsher edges of the original play, Tyler leans into awkward family dinners, mismatched expectations, and the small negotiations that make up everyday love. The result is a brisk, funny novel that can be read as a romantic comedy, as a portrait of a stubborn young woman pushed into the spotlight, or as a sideways conversation with Shakespeare.

On this page, the Hogarth Shakespeare series serves as a home for Vinegar Girl and for readers curious about how Tyler’s version fits into the broader project. Whether you read it alongside the play or simply as another of her Baltimore stories, it offers a playful gateway into both Shakespeare’s themes and Tyler’s world.