[Sybarite]

It can become a little trying if, every time you read a novel, you try to find out about and then bear in mind the context in which it was written, but I'd say there are times when it can be a positive boon.

In terms of Virginia Woolf, I mentioned in my review of Mrs Dalloway that her attitude to suicide, as implied by the book itself, is particularly interesting in terms of her own suicide. Her knowledge of shellshock was almost certainly increased by her friendship with Siegfried Sassoon.

For me, Thomas Mann's novels are improved as a reading experience by knowing more of the author and his times.

And sometimes it really can help form a judgment on a text.

Take Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, which has been seen, particularly in recent years, as an anti-semitic play. Yet the text can suggest otherwise – there are no 'nice' characters in the play; Shylock is not the worst behaved. His speech on common human experience – "If you prick me do I not bleed ... if you tickle me, do I not laugh" – is an essentially humane one. But still the idea sticks because it's easy.

However, the play was written in 1596, against a background of race riots that had been orchestrated by the Earl of Essex, who was trying to usurp Elizabeth I. Her private physician was a man called Ricardo Lopez, a Portuguese Jew who had converted to Christianity. Essex used the anti-semitism of the times to orchestrate the anti-semitic riots, with the claim that Lopez was attempting to assassinate the queen. Eventually, Elizabeth had little option but to give in. Lopez was summarily tried and executed. It's clear that Elizabeth didn't believe anything of the story – she returned all Lopez's confiscated lands and property to his widow after his death; almost unheard of. And then, of course, she got rid of Essex.

But this was the immediate historic background to Shakespeare's play. Seen in that light, it suggests that Shakespeare was far from being anti-semitic, but was carefully attempting to create a more sensitive character – to provoke a view of all races being the same.

It's worth noting too that Shakespeare's own father was found guilty of usury – so usury in Shakespeare's plays (it also occurs as a subject in Timon of Athens) is not something that the writer saw as a 'sinful' behaviour that was unique to Jews.

So, the point is that while context is most certainly not everything, it can help to give us a more thorough reading of a text – and in some cases, one that challenges popular perception.

The question is which texts to give that treatment to and which to read at 'face value', so to speak.