The Elizabethan Underworld

This social history reconstructs the criminal and vagrant world of late-sixteenth-century England, especially London. Salgado draws on rogue pamphlets, court records, and plays to describe thieves' jargons, confidence tricks, brothels, prisons such as Newgate and the Counter, and the official machinery of watch, bridewell, and hanging. He follows types the age named - cony-catchers, rufflers, doxies - and the streets and liberties where they worked. The book is an account of low life and its literature, not a general political history of Elizabeth's reign.

Map endpapers. 8 tipped in colour illustration pages. Bound black cloth cover blocked with a red and yellow picture. Black slipcase.