The Gentle Craft

Thomas Deloney

Ashgate, 2007 - Literary Criticism - 167 pages

In this volume Simon Barker offers Deloney's tale in modern typography, with explanatory notes and an extensive introduction, a detailed account of the sources and influence of the book, its publication history, and what is known of its author. He suggests that Deloney's combination of romance with the practical morality of an emerging social class produced a text that is uniquely important for those interested in late-Elizabethan popular culture.

About the author

Little is known about the life of Thomas Deloney. Most of Deloney's literary production seems to have taken the form of ballads; however, his four prose narratives are admired for their depiction of character and popular bourgeois culture, and their handling of dialogue. The Gentle Craft (1 and 2) (1597--98) portrays the world of cobblers, while Thomas of Reading (1599?) resembles later historical novels. Jack of Newbery (1597-98), published in eight editions by 1619, presents the adventures of an upwardly mobile apprentice who marries his master's widow and goes on to become a power in the realm.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Gentle Craft; Non-canonical early modern popular texts
• Author: Thomas Deloney
• Editor: Simon Barker
• Publisher: Ashgate, 2007
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: May 28, 2008
• ISBN: 0754638944, 9780754638940
• Length: 167 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / Drama