Guy Of Warwick and Other Chapbook Romances
Six Tales from the Popular Literature of Pre-Industrial England
Distributed for Liverpool University Press
160 pages
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illustrations
Chapbooks formed the staple reading matter of ordinary people during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries; they were also read by children of the gentry. They included fiction, almanacs, religious guidance and radical political tracts, and were available throughout the British Isles and in colonial America.
The six chapbook romances in this volume all derive from tales of chivalric adventure and courtly love which were current in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. They provide a fascinating window on the mental world of rural England and America before the advent of mass media. No previous attempt has been made to produce the full text of a selection of chapbooks for the modern reader; they have remained the province of specialist bibliographers and antiquarians.
Notes and Queries
“John Simons's edited collection of eighteenth-century chapbooks seeks to provide an insight into the reading habits of the pre-industrial rural and urban poor. . . In keeping with his expressed intention of replicating as closely as possible the original reading experience, Simons pursues a non-interventionist editorial policy retaining all misprints. . . Throughout his introduction and notes, Simons highlights the way in which the chapbooks perpetuated the motifs and concerns of medieval and Renaissance chivalric romance, whilst adapting the narratives for an eighteenth-century and non-élite readership.” –Notes and Queries, Volume 46, Number 4, December 1999
Contents
1. List of Illustrations
2. Preface
3. Acknowledgements
4. Introduction: Why Read Chapbooks?
5. Notes on the Introduction
6. Commentary on the Illustrations
7. Editorial Note
8. Guy of Warwick (Prose)
9. Guy of Warwick (Verse)
10. The Seven Champions of Christendom
11. Parismus
12. Valentine and Orson
13. The Seven Wise Masters of Rome
14. Notes on the Text
15. Bibliography
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Literature and Literary Criticism: Fiction
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