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Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars
A New Gallery of Tudor and Early Stuart Rogue Literature
Now back in print, a classic work originally published in a limited edition by the Imprint Society
The Elizabethan age was one of unbounded vitality and exuberance. Nowhere is the color and action of life more vividly revealed than in the rogue books and cony-catching (confidence game) pamphlets of the sixteenth century. This book presents seven of the age's liveliest works: Walker's Manifest Detection of Dice Play; Awdeley's Fraternity of Vagabonds; Harman's Caveat for Common Cursitors Vulgarly Called Vagabonds; Greene's Notable Discovery of Cozenage and Black Book's Messenger; Dekker's Lantern and Candlelight; and Rid's Art of Juggling. From these pages spring the denizens of the Elizabethan underworld: cutpurses, hookers, palliards, jarkmen, doxies, counterfeit cranks, bawdy-baskets, walking morts, and priggers of prancers.
In his introduction, Arthur F. Kinney discusses the significance of these works as protonovels and their influence on such writers as Shakespeare. He also explores the social, political, and economic conditions of a time that spawned a community of renegades who conned their way to fame, fortune, and, occasionally, the rope at Tyburn.
"Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars collects significant rogue books and cony catching pamphlets. Given the renewed interest in such texts in recent years,their availability in a modern edition is a considerable boon to Renaissance scholars—especially in an edition enhanced by Kinney's thorough and informative introduction."
Steven Mullaney, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Arthur F. Kinney is Thomas W. Copeland Professor of Literary History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and founding editor of English Literary Renaissance.
Renaissance Studies
328 pp., 18 illustrations
LC 89-49467
$24.95t paper, ISBN 0-87023-718-7
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