Paul Altrocchi, MD, has given several recent Shakespeare Authorship talks, entitled "Who Wrote Shakespeare? England's Best-Kept Secret " to groups in Oregon, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The largest attendance was 90, the smallest 14 Vassar Alumni in Providence. Paul reports that the most convincing elements were information on de Vere's unknown life story, his close relationship to Queen Elizabeth, Oxfordian dating of the canon, the many book dedications and tributes to him, the Peacham "Compleat Gentleman" story, Roger Stritmatter's research on the Geneva Bible and the providing of sources when requested. Dr. Altrocchi's recent novel on de Vere as Shakespeare, Most Greatly Lived is available from Amazon and his two recent articles on Elizabethan portraiture are featured in the first two issues of Shakespeare Matters. His next scheduled talk is in Honolulu. These educational efforts are much appreciated by the Fellowship.

Toronto, Canada

Fellowship founder and Vice-president for internal communications Lynne Kositsky reports superlative sales of her newest children's novel, A Mighty Big Imagining, about a South Carolina slave girl who is relocated to Nova Scotia by the British after the Civil war. In four months the book has sold over twenty thousand copies and has received an abundance of critical acclaim, primarily in Canada. Among younger readers Kositksy's book on Edward de Vere, A Question of Will (2000), has been a huge boost to the case for de Vere's authorship of the Shakespeare canon. An Amazon.com reviewer from Palo Alto Ca. describes the book as "an engaging, entertaining, and indeed positively delightful romp through the underworld of the Elizabethan theatrical scene." Both books are available online at www.chapters.ca.

Northampton, Massachusetts.

Roger Stritmatter's 2001 PhD dissertation on de Vere's Bible has been nominated for the prestigious Bernheimer award for the best PhD dissertation in Comparative Literature. So far the judges of the competition have been mute in response to the nomination. However, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, whose numerous public comments in support of de Vere's authorship have made him the most outspoken of several Supreme Court Justices who support inquiry and debate on the authorship question, has voiced his congratulations to Stritmatter in a recent letter. Stevens refers to the dissertation as "an impressive piece of work" and endorses its primary conclusion: "You demonstrate that the owner of the de Vere Bible had the same familiarity with its text as the author of the Shakespeare canon."

"I trust you will not object," added Stevens, "if I refer to your thesis when I comment on the authorship question in future talks....in time, more and more traditional scholars will be compelled to recognize the force of the evidence you have assembled in support of the Oxfordian position."

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