First published in 1967. This volume has grown out of a study of a number of Elizabethan pamphlets dealing with rogues and vagabonds, the most important of which are the Conny-catching series of Robert Greene and the Catteat for Commm Cursetors of Thomas Harman. 'Conny-catching' was an Elizabethan slang word for a particular method of cheating at cards, but it came to be used in a general sense for all kinds of tricks by which rogues and sharpers beguiled simple people of their money. The books are vivid and well written, and they picture an elaborately organized profession of roguery with a language of its own and a large number of well-defined. Methods and traditions.

The Elizabethan age was one of unbounded vitality and exuberance; nowhere is the color and action of life more vividly revealed than in the rogue books and cony-catching (confidence game) pamphlets of the sixteenth century. This book presents seven of the age's liveliest works: Walker's Manifest Detection of Dice Play; Awdeley's Fraternity of Vagabonds; Harman's Caveat for Common Cursitors Vulgarly Called Vagabonds; Greene's Notable Discovery of Cozenage and Black Book's Messenger; Dekker's Lantern and Candle-light; and Rid's Art of Juggling. From these pages spring the denizens of the Elizabethan underworld: cutpurses, hookers, palliards, jarkmen, doxies, counterfeit cranks, bawdy-baskets, walking morts, and priggers of prancers. In his introduction, Arthur F. Kinney discusses the significance of these works as protonovels and their influence on such writers as Shakespeare. He also explores the social, political, and economic conditions of a time that spawned a community of renegades who conned their way to fame, fortune, and, occasionally, the rope at Tyburn.

Compiled from material taken from Harrison's "Description of England" which was produced as part of the publishing venture of a group of London stationers who produced Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (London 1577).

Woodbridge shows that the prevailing image of the vagrant poor in Renaissance England--sturdy, comical, resourceful rogues who were adept at living on the fringes of society--was essentially a literary fabrication pressed into the service of specific social and political agendas.

A definitive collection of critical essays on the literary and cultural impact of the early modern rogue