An Anthology Of Elizabethan Prose Fiction

These five works represent Elizabethan fiction at its best. The Adventures of Master F.J. is a comedy of manners with a sting in its tail. In Euphues John Lyly invented a new, elaborate rhetorical style which delighted its Elizabethan audience and has been praised or parodied ever since. Pandosto was Shakespeare's source for The Winters Tale, but Greene's is a darker story designed to shock the reader accustomed to romantic conventions. The Unfortunate Traveller marks the peak of Nashes gift for literary pastiche, mixing picaresque narrative with mock-historical fantasy. Jack of Newbury, dedicated to 'All famous Cloth Workers in England', sums up important social contradictions in sharply observed comic scenes and brisk, witty dialogue.