The English Rogue - described in the life of Meriton Latroon a witty extravagant being a complete history of the most eminent cheats of both sexes


Book Description

When it first appeared, The English Rogue was declared a forbidden book on account of its gross indecency. Copies were printed secretly and sold furtively at alehouses until 1665 when it was properly licensed. When requested, the author, Richard Head, declined to produce a second volume as it was his belief that the text had been interpreted as autobiographical and his reputation had suffered as a consequence. Francis Kirkman, who had acquired the rights to the work, set about the endeavour himself and wrote the remaining volumes, publishing them in 1671. This is a reprint of the 1928 reissue containing Head's original book and two of Kirkman's added volumes.










The English Rogue


Book Description




Key Writings on Subcultures, 1535-1727


Book Description

This volume collates sixteen of the more important tracts from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries dealing with the lives and misdoings of thieves, rogues and tricksters.




The Elizabethan Underworld - a collection of Tudor and Early Stuart Tracts and Ballads


Book Description

The Elizabethan Underworld collects together sixteen of the more important tracts from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries dealing with the lives and misdoings of thieves, rogues, and tricksters. For the most part the original authors were men of experience - watchmen, constables and those who drifted into the London underworld and learnt its tricks. A thorough introduction contributes a full historical background and outlines contemporary social contexts.




A History of the Irish Novel


Book Description

Derek Hand's A History of the Irish Novel is a major work of criticism on some of the greatest and most globally recognisable writers of the novel form. Writers such as Laurence Sterne, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett and John McGahern have demonstrated the extraordinary intellectual range, thematic complexity and stylistic innovation of Irish fiction. Derek Hand provides a remarkably detailed picture of the Irish novel's emergence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows the story of the genre is the story of Ireland's troubled relationship to modernisation. The first critical synthesis of the Irish novel from the seventeenth century to the present day, this is a major book for the field, and the first to thematically, theoretically and contextually chart its development. It is an essential, entertaining and highly original guide to the history of the Irish novel.







The Life and Times of Mary, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland


Book Description

This definitive biography depicts one Victorian woman’s struggle to stay afloat in a rising tide of prurient scandalmongering and snobbery. Could it be that this woman’s character and circumstances informed Oscar Wilde’s social comedies? She was the daughter of a leading Conservative Oxford don, vilified as an arrogant fortune-hunter. Her liaison dangereuse with a Duke resulted in ostracism by Queen Victoria’s cronies, as well as protracted, widely publicised legal disputes with his family. One battle put her in Holloway Gaol for six weeks. Her supporters, over time, included Disraeli, the Khedival family of Egypt, the de Lesseps, and Sir Albert Kaye Rollit (a promoter of women’s suffrage, later her third husband). Her life and that of her family drew in British and European colonialism, and even Reilly, the “Ace of Spies”. Various previously untapped letters, diaries and journals allow the reader to navigate through the sensationalist fog of the primarily Liberal press of her time. The book will appeal to anyone interested in Victorian and journalism history, and gender and celebrity studies.