About Early English Prose Fiction
‘The texts of Early English Prose Fiction are essential to understand
the development of narrative in English. What came to be recognised as the
dominant characteristic of English fiction, realism, was only one of a rich
diversity of approaches in fiction’s early years. The collection shows the
evolution of English prose, covering the change from a predominantly oral culture,
where prose fiction can be understood as "written speech", to a literary
culture dependent on strictly literary conventions.
‘As well as the evolution of genre, the collection shows the development of
narrative technique. Many things we now take for granted can be seen as narrative
problems that early fiction had to solve – such as how the author should deal
with a character’s reiteration of events that have already been related to the
reader, or whether the reader should experience an emotional piece of correspondence
when it is being written or on delivery.
‘The fiction in the collection also offers an invaluable guide to the attitudes
of everyday life, and provides a basis for understanding the high culture of
the period. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, have a very different feel when
seen in the context of the fiction that was part of his milieu.
‘The material of Early English Prose Fiction, besides
its value for a scholarly understanding of the early stages of English fiction,
displays a delight in the fictionality of fiction, a pleasure of imagination
that many readers may have forgotten is an essential part of literature.’
David Margolies
Goldsmith’s College, University of London
‘From a linguistic point of view, Early English Prose Fiction largely
covers Early Modern English and provides a unique opportunity for broadly based
in-depth study of forms and developments in the language, especially in the
fields of grammar and syntax, morphology, lexis and semantics. The selection
has been carried out with a view to continuous coverage, though the realities
of literary production in the period, with its periods of slack and of massed
publication, is of necessity reflected: the volume of prose fiction coming from
the presses increased towards the end of the sixteenth and again enormously
towards the end of the seventeenth century, and no selection could neglect this
trend. Yet most decades are well represented.
‘Twentieth-century texts and theory have widened our concepts of not only what
the novel but what prose fiction in general may encompass. At the formative
stages of what one should (refining Ian Watt’s expression) term “The Rise of
the Realist Novel in the West” there was a welter of trends, experiments and
hybrid forms of great interest not only for the evolution of the major types
but also for general analyses of structure and narrative technique. While providing
the basis for new looks at the history of prose fiction and in particular the
novel in England, the collection also greatly enhances the possibilities of
comparative literary studies in the Renaissance and Baroque periods in Britain
and continental European countries by enlarging the English material readily
available.
‘For cultural studies centred on Britain from the late Middle Ages to
the beginnings of the Augustan age, the database provides a rich fund of materials
hitherto not easily available. Of all literary genres, prose fiction presents
in most detail and concreteness the individual in a social environment – natural
and man-made surroundings, economic, social and political situations, structures
and institutions, the inventions and devices of civilisation, everyday habits
and customs in the framework of individual and family life as well as in the
scale of social groupings or indeed society as a whole at particular points
in time. Fiction may not necessarily present objective data for the immediate
use of social and economic historians; but it does enable scholars to obtain
images of life, to feel the pulse of past periods precisely in those areas that
are incidental to the authors' plots but can be taken as indicative of the very
stuff of life.’
Holger Klein
Universität Salzburg
Contents
Early English Prose Fiction is a balanced and
representative survey of fictional prose in English from the period 1500–1700,
comprising more than 200 works. The database includes numerous rare texts inaccessible
in print form together with early editions of all the best-known works of the
period, such as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and Sir Philip Sidney’s
Arcadia. Many different kinds of fiction are represented, from prose
romances (such as Boyle’s Parthenissa) through to popular jest
books (such as Peele’s Merrie Conceited Iests and Skelton’s Merie
Tales) and specimens of rogue literature (for example Settle’s The Notorious
Impostor and the anonymous Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith, Commonly
Called Mal Cutpurse).
Other highlights of the collection include:
- The Vnfortvnate Traveller: Or, The life of Iacke Wilton
(1594) by Thomas Nashe, recognised as the earliest
picaresque narrative in English
- Aphra Behn’s anti-slavery novel Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave
(1688)
- Works by Margaret Cavendish, Delarivier Manley, Mary Pix, Anna Weamys and
Lady Mary Wroth
- Euphves: The Anatomy of Wyt
[1578] and Euphues and his England (1580) – the two parts of John Lyly’s
romance Euphues – the highly artificial style of which gave rise to
the term ‘Euphuism’
- Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie (1590),
written in imitation of Lyly and dramatised by Shakespeare in As You Like
It
- The Famovs and Remarkable History of Sir Richard Whittington
(1656) by Thomas Heywood, which recounts the enduring
legend of Whittington and his cat
Editorial Policy
Early English Prose Fiction has
been produced in association with the Salzburg Centre for Research on the Early
English Novel (SCREEN).
Each text is reproduced in full, including all prefatory matter and annotation
by the original author. Texts are accompanied by bibliographic information
relating to the source edition used. Illustrations integral to the text are
included, as are errata lists.
Authors and works have been selected under the guidance of the editorial board
to meet the needs of academic teaching and research. The guiding principle
has been one of inclusiveness, particularly with regard to the many different
types of fiction that characterise the period.
The collection excludes non-fictional prose and medieval ‘survivals’ (works
pre-dating the period in question but printed within it). Works of fiction
translated from other languages are excluded, with one exception (Barclay’s
romance Argenis, translated from Latin by Kingsmill Long).
Editorial Board
Professor Holger Klein Universität Salzburg
Dr David Margolies Goldsmith’s College, University of London
Professor Janet Todd University of East Anglia
Advisory Panel:
Professor Don Beecher Carleton University
Professor Helmut Bonheim Universität zu Köln
Professor Jim Harner Texas A&M University
Professor James Hogg Universität Salzburg
Professor Werner von Koppenfels Universität München
Dr Robert Letellier associate of SCREEN, London
Professor Robert Rehder Université de Fribourg
Professor Paul Salzman La Trobe University
Professor Goran Stanivukuvic University of Calgary
Professor György Szönyi Jozsef Attila Tudományegyetem, Szeged
Professor Ioann Williams University College Wales, Aberystwyth
