Shelf Life

From Karl Baden's exhibit, a 1936 photograph by Dorothea Lange. (''Covering Photography'')

Doubts about the Bard
Alex McNeil thrives on challenges of epic proportions. Back in the 1990s, he gathered details about 5,400 shows for his book "Total Television."

In recent years, he has turned his prodigious research skills on no less a giant than William Shakespeare. McNeil believes that Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford, wrote the works credited to Shakespeare. Legions of scholars and Shakespeare devotees disagree, but that hasn't stopped McNeil, president of the Shakespeare Fellowship, a leading organization in the de Vere camp.

McNeil finds it curious that neither of Shakespeare's daughters could read or write. McNeil, an attorney, will make his case at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Boston Public Library. Why was Shakespeare put forth as a literary "front man"? McNeil promises to explain.

Après Oprah
Wally Lamb's first two novels rode Oprah Winfrey's endorsement to the top of the bestseller charts in the late 1990s. It took him a while to find his way with the novel being published this week. "The Hour I First Believed" (Harper) is a moving, sprawling story that seesaws between hope and despair. At its core are the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. Hurricane Katrina, the Civil War, and a women's prison in Connecticut play a role, as do Mark Twain and Miss Rheingold, but the main characters are a married couple who work at Columbine High School.

"The Hour I First Believed" calls to mind details from Lamb's own life. He taught high school for decades and, more recently, taught writing at a women's prison in Connecticut. One of his sons was teaching in New Orleans when Katrina struck, and Lamb overcame a case of writer's block on a visit to the city.

Lamb, who on Tuesday launches a national book tour at his alma mater, the University of Connecticut, stops in Brookline at 6 p.m. Friday. Details at www.brooklinebooksmith.com.

The image question
With his collection of 2,000 books, Karl Baden upends the adage "Don't judge a book by its cover." Baden, a photographer and professor at Boston College, collects books for the iconic images the covers evoke. He wonders: Was the book designer aware that a similar image already existed? Did the designer subconsciously absorb it? Or is there no connection whatsoever?

Baden mulls these issues in the exhibit he curated at the Boston Public Library, "Covering Photography: Imitation, Influence . . . and Coincidence."

The cover of John McEnroe's autobiography, "You Cannot Be Serious," looks like a restaging of Dennis Stock's portrait of James Dean. Baden wonders: Is that what the former tennis star and enfant terrible intended? Is the little girl's dress on the cover of "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" inspired by a similarly haunting photograph in Adam Fuss's "My Ghost" series?

Baden and two other collectors - who specialize in Italian architecture and the atomic age - will speak at the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair at 3 p.m. Saturday at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center. Details at www.bos tonbookfair.com.

Coming out