How many books did shakespeares write?

Answer 1

It depends what you mean by "books". He published about three long poems, if you want to call those books. He wrote a bunch of short poems which someone else collected into a book. He wrote 38 plays, which were a sheaf of papers until other people came along and published them, at first one by one and later, after his death, all but two collected in one volume. Was that one book or 36 books? Or are you asking whether he ever wrote something which he meant to have published in a book. The answer is, only the two poems Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece.

Shakespeare never wrote stories or novels.

Answer 2

Shakespeare did not write very many things with the intention of having them published. His narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were both printed by an old schoolmate from Stratford and contained effulgent testimonials to Shakespeare's patron who had helped financially to get the publication off the ground. These two poems were the only things Shakespeare clearly wrote with the intention that they should be read as books.

Everything else he wrote was published by someone else, not infrequently without his permission and certainly never to his profit. He wrote sonnets which were intended for private distribution but ended up being published anyway. He also wrote plays which he intended that people should pay money to come and watch, rather than stay at home and read. Having people read the plays was contrary to his financial interest. Many of them (about half) were not published in any form until after his death.

Answer 3

It depends what you define as a "book". He wrote a lot of short poems called sonnets, that were collected together into a book. He also wrote plays which were not intended to be published but were sometimes anyway. About half of his plays were not published separately until many years after his death, but were published in a collection shortly thereafter. He did actually write two things which he intended to publish separately and not as a part of a collection: his long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. In this sense, then, he only wrote two "books".