Jack of Newbury

A Broadview Anthology of British Literature Edition
“Among all manual arts used in this land, none is more famous for desert, or more beneficial to the commonwealth, than is the most necessary art of clothing.” So begins Thomas Deloney’s extraordinary prose narrative. It is an amiable and remarkably entertaining work of fiction - and also one that connects powerfully with the real world of sixteenth-century England.

Jack of Newbury is an incisive yet remarkably entertaining work of narrative prose—and one that was extremely popular when it was published in the 1590s. The title character, an apprentice weaver, marries his former master’s wife, expands her cloth business into an enormous enterprise, refuses Henry VIII’s offer of a knighthood, and confronts Cardinal Wolsey; meanwhile, his servants find themselves in a range of comic situations. While amusing, Jack of Newbury also carries a serious and subversive political message: as Peter C. Herman puts it in his introduction to the volume, “the truly valuable subjects” in Deloney’s narrative “are not the nobility, but the merchant class.” The range of contextual materials included with this edition help to set it in the broader context of its economic and political as well as literary culture.

Contributor: Leonard Conolly (General editor), Anne Lake Prescott (General editor), Don LePan (General editor), Claire Waters (General editor), Jerome J. McGann (General editor), Isobel Grundy (General editor), Joseph Black (General editor), Kate Flint (General editor), Peter C. Herman (Edited by), Barry V. Qualls (General editor), Roy Liuzza (General editor)

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