Read for a class about early modern English literature. Professor felt it represented post-modern literature avant la lettre, I argued it represented pre-modern literature, before genre conventions and even the basics of the novel had been firmed up. Hilarity ensued. We later stared on stage togethe

Though short, this is a real eye opener as to life in those times. Violent, harsh, cruel, filthy, disgusting... and all told in loving detail by a man who travels about Europe. The language is a bit tough, I would suggest trying to read this with a group because reading it on your own is hard. The o

Nashe's [The Unfortunate Traveller] reads like pulp fiction, unfortunately for Nashe it was written at a time when there was no market for it. Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet and satirist who had made his name as a pamphleteer. His previous publication was Christ Tears o

This is one of the most fucked-up books I've read recently. I haven't read torture scenes this lovingly depicted since "Naked Lunch." And this was June 27, 1593! The antisemitism of pretty idiotic, but this was the 1500's after all.

This narrative published in 1594 is sometimes listed as the first English novel, but it is surely not a "novel" in any formal sense of the word. An odd book, extremely loose in construction, it begins as a collection of prankish anecdotes, shifts into a picaresque account of continental travel (stud