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83-465: Thomas Deloney (born c.  1540–1560 ; died in or shortly before 1600) was an English silk-weaver, novelist , and ballad writer. Thomas Deloney was born sometime in the middle decades of the 16th century; the precise date is not recorded. Although often alleged to be a native of Norwich, he was most likely born in London, where he was trained as a silk-weaver. French and Walloon immigrants dominated

166-526: A sizar on 26 November 1575. The author's father was probably one of two Robert Greenes found later in parish records: either a saddler who lived modestly in the parish until 1599, or a cordwainer who kept an inn in Norwich from the late 1570s until his death in 1591. The saddler appeals to biographers who attribute the writer's later low-life sympathies to a humble birth; the innkeeper, a more prosperous man possibly related to landowners, interests scholars who note

249-594: A "butterfly pamphlet" about 8 September, and later expanded as Four Letters and Certain Sonnets , entered in the Stationers' Register on 4 December 1592. Harvey attributed Greene's demise to "a surfeit of pickle herring and Rhenish wine", and claimed he had been buried in "the New Churchyard near Bedlam " on 4 September. No record of Greene's burial has been found. According to The Repentance of Robert Greene , Greene

332-448: A Fortunatus Greene was buried at Shoreditch on 12 August 1593, "whose folk-tale name might lie behind Harvey's jest". According to Newcomb, '[Greene's] works evince an inexhaustible linguistic facility, grounded in wide (if not painstaking) reading in the classics, and extra-curricular reading in the modern continental languages'. He wrote prolifically: From 1583 to 1592, he published more than twenty-five works in prose, becoming one of

415-483: A New York Times editorial challenging Misplaced Pages's categorization of American female novelists within a distinct category , which precipitated a significant amount of press coverage describing that Misplaced Pages's approach to categorization as sexism. For her, the public representation of women novelists within another category marginalizes and defines women novelists like herself outside of a field of "American novelists" dominated by men. However, other commentators, discussing

498-510: A Novelist", highlight such moral and ethical justifications for their approach to both writing novels and criticizing them. When defining her description of the role of the modernist novelist in the essay " Modern Fiction ", Virginia Woolf argues for a representation of life not interested in the exhaustive specific details represented in realism in favor of representing a "myriad of impressions" created in experience life. Her definition made in this essay, and developed in others, helped define

581-644: A Panda-Leopard , at the age of 15, which brought him considerable critical attention. Similarly, Barbara Newhall Follett 's The House Without Windows , was accepted and published in 1927 when she was 13 by the Knopf publishing house and earned critical acclaim from the New York Times , the Saturday Review , and H. L. Mencken . Occasionally, these works will achieve popular success as well. For example, though Christopher Paolini 's Eragon (published at age 15)

664-481: A Scottish identity that the upper-class British society could embrace. In American fiction, the concept of American literary regionalism ensures that many genres of novel associated with particular regions often define the reception of the novelists. For example, in writing Western novels , Zane Grey has been described as a "place-defining novelist", credited for defining the western frontier in America consciousness at

747-498: A century after the novel form first solidified at the beginning of the 19th century. Often such British regional literature captures the social and local character of a particular region in Britain, focussing on specific features, such as dialect, customs, history, and landscape (also called local colour ): "Such a locale is likely to be rural and/or provincial." Thomas Hardy 's (1840–1928) novels can be described as regional because of

830-526: A courtesy degree". Thereafter the title pages of some of his published works bore the phrase Utruisq. Academiae in Artibus Magister' , "Master of Arts in both Universities". Greene died 3 September 1592, (aged 34 if he was the Robert Greene baptised in 1558). His death and burial were announced by Gabriel Harvey in a letter to Christopher Bird of Saffron Walden dated 5 September, first published as

913-542: A distance) to note the order of their Coaches and Carriages..As if (presented to a Novelist) it had bin the spoyles of a Tryumph leading Captive, or a preparation to some sad Execution" According to the Google Ngrams, the term novelist first appears in the Google Books database in 1521. The difference between professional and amateur novelists often is the author's ability to publish. Many people take up novel writing as

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996-450: A distinction between novelists who report reality by "taking life as it already exists, not to report it, but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it, and offer it to the reader" and journalists, whose role is to act as "crusaders" advocating for particular positions, and using their craft as a political tool. Similarly, writing in the 1950s, Ralph Ellison in his essay "Society, Morality, and

1079-508: A fee paid by the writer. In these settings, unlike the more traditional publishing industry, activities usually reserved for a publishing house, like the distribution and promotion of the book, become the author's responsibility. The rise of the Internet and electronic books has made self publishing far less expensive and a realistic way for authors to realize income. Novelists apply a number of different methods to writing their novels, relying on

1162-470: A group of writers known as the " Angry young men ," which included the novelists Alan Sillitoe and Kingsley Amis , who came from the working class and who wrote about working class culture . Some novelists deliberately write for a working class audience for political ends, profiling "the working classes and working-class life; perhaps with the intention of making propaganda". Such literature, sometimes called proletarian literature , maybe associated with

1245-460: A hobby, but the difficulties of completing large scale fictional works of quality prevent the completion of novels. Once authors have completed a novel, they often will try to publish it. The publishing industry requires novels to have accessible profitable markets, thus many novelists will self-publish to circumvent the editorial control of publishers. Self-publishing has long been an option for writers, with vanity presses printing bound books for

1328-460: A letter allegedly written by Greene to his wife in which he addresses her as "Doll". However, "[E]xtensive searches of London and Norwich records by successive biographers have failed finally to locate the record of Greene's marriage". After his move to London, Greene published over twenty-five works in prose in a variety of genres, becoming "England's first celebrity author". In 1588, he was granted an MA from Oxford University , "almost certainly

1411-477: A member of the commercial class of artisans and merchants in Elizabethan London. They are often thought to reflect the character and interests of the growing English "middle class". Jack of Newbury , which is dedicated to the cloth-makers of England, is a fictionalized biography of John Winchcombe ( c.  1489 −1557), a notable Tudor clothier, while The Gentle Craft , dedicated to his fellow artisans,

1494-469: A myth of prodigal decline that cannot be taken at face value". His plays earned himself the title as one of the " University Wits ", including John Lyly , George Peele , Thomas Nashe , and Christopher Marlowe . Richardson makes a similar argument, concluding that Greene's later works 'prejudice the examination of all the work before them', and that the prose works prior to the coney-catching and repentance pamphlets establish that 'initially at least Greene

1577-675: A particular character based on the national identity of the authors. In some literature, national identity shapes the self-definition of many novelists. For example, in American literature , many novelists set out to create the " Great American Novel ", or a novel that defines the American experience in their time. Other novelists engage politically or socially with the identity of other members of their nationality, and thus help define that national identity. For instance, critic Nicola Minott-Ahl describes Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris directly helping in

1660-414: A particular social responsibility or role to novel writers. Many authors use such moral imperatives to justify different approaches to novel writing, including activism or different approaches to representing reality "truthfully." Novelist is a term derivative from the term "novel" describing the "writer of novels." The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes other definitions of novelist, first appearing in

1743-489: A secondary hobby. Few novelists become literary celebrities or become very wealthy from the sale of their novels alone. Often those authors who are wealthy and successful will produce extremely popular genre fiction. Examples include authors like James Patterson , who was the highest paid author in 2010, making 70 million dollars, topping both other novelists and authors of non-fiction. Other famous literary millionaires include popular successes like J. K. Rowling , author of

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1826-490: A small monetary advance before publication of their debut novel; in the rare exceptions when a large print run and high volume of sales are anticipated, the advance can be larger. However, once an author has established themselves in print, some authors can make steady income as long as they remain productive as writers. Additionally, many novelists, even published ones, will take on outside work, such as teaching creative writing in academic institutions , or leave novel writing as

1909-452: A strong focus by novelists from there on the significance of family, religion, community, the use of the Southern dialect , along with a strong sense of place. The South 's troubled history with racial issues has also continually concerned its novelists. In Latin America a literary movement called Criollismo or costumbrismo was active from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of

1992-476: A total of over 2.8 billion words. Novelists do not usually publish their first novels until later in life. However, many novelists begin writing at a young age. For example, Iain Banks began writing at eleven, and at sixteen completed his first novel, "The Hungarian Lift-Jet", about international arms dealers, "in pencil in a larger-than-foolscap log book". However, he was thirty before he published his first novel,

2075-440: A variety of approaches to inspire creativity. Some communities actively encourage amateurs to practice writing novels to develop these unique practices, that vary from author to author. For example, the internet-based group, National Novel Writing Month , encourages people to write 50,000-word novels in the month of November, to give novelists practice completing such works. In the 2010 event, over 200,000 people took part – writing

2158-579: Is alleged to have written Groatsworth during the month prior to his death, including in it a letter to his wife asking her to forgive him and stating that he was sending their son to her. No record of Greene's son by his wife has been found; however, in Four Letters , Gabriel Harvey claimed that Greene kept a mistress, Em, the sister of a criminal known as " Cutting Ball " hanged at Tyburn . Harvey described her as "a sorry ragged quean of whom [Greene] had his base son Infortunatus Greene". According to Newcomb,

2241-403: Is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum , is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. Greene evidently complains of an actor who believes he can write as well as university-educated playwrights, alludes to

2324-559: Is based on, and nearly geographically identical to, Lafayette County, of which his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi . In addition to the geographical component of Southern literature, certain themes have appeared because of the similar histories of the Southern states in regard to slavery , the American Civil War , and Reconstruction . The conservative culture in the South has also produced

2407-409: Is not a question of the subject matter or political stance of a particular author, but of her gender : her position as a woman within the literary marketplace. However, the publishing market's orientation to favor the primary reading audience of women may increasingly skew the market towards female novelists; for this reason, novelist Teddy Wayne argued in a 2012 Salon article titled "The agony of

2490-573: Is particularly associated with the rural English Midlands, whereas Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) is the novelist of the Potteries in Staffordshire , or the "Five Towns", (actually six) that now make-up Stoke-on-Trent . Similarly, novelist and poet Walter Scott 's (1771–1832) contribution in creating a unified identity for Scotland and were some of the most popular in all of Europe during the subsequent century. Scott's novels were influential in recreating

2573-508: Is said to have been born in Norwich . He attended Cambridge where he received a BA in 1580, and an M.A. in 1583 before moving to London, where he arguably became the first professional author in England. He was prolific and published in many genres including romances, plays and autobiography. According to the author Brenda Richardson , the "chief problem" in compiling a biography of Robert Greene

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2656-623: The Harry Potter series, Dan Brown author of The Da Vinci Code , historical novelist Bernard Cornwell , and Twilight author Stephenie Meyer . "[the novelist's] honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania [...] The novelist is the sole master of his work. He is his work." Milan Kundera The personal experiences of the novelist will often shape what they write and how readers and critics will interpret their novels. Literary reception has long relied on practices of reading literature through biographical criticism , in which

2739-683: The literary criticism commenting on it, and the novelists' incorporation of their own experiences into works and characters can lead to the author's personal life and identity being associated with a novel's fictional content. For this reason, the environment within which a novelist works and the reception of their novels by both the public and publishers can be influenced by their demographics or identity. Similarly, some novelists have creative identities derived from their focus on different genres of fiction , such as crime , romance or historical novels . While many novelists compose fiction to satisfy personal desires, novelists and commentators often ascribe

2822-522: The 129 students at the university. It was "rare for a student to migrate to another college (as Greene did) after he had received the baccalaureate", and no record of Greene's transfer to Clare College has been discovered, nor does his name appear in the Clare Hall Buttery Book for 1580–84. Greene's claim to association with Clare College is found in the second part of Mamillia , which was not published until 1593, after Greene's death, in which

2905-490: The 1580s and 1590s he became well known as a writer of popular printed ballads, many of which circulated as ephemeral broadsides , while others were collected in books and pamphlets. His subject matter, like that of most Elizabethan and Jacobean balladists, was wide-ranging and eclectic, including stories from English history and romance, religious and moral exhortations, social and political commentary, and journalistic reporting of current events. Among his topical poems on news of

2988-448: The 16th and 17th centuries to refer to either "An innovator (in thought or belief); someone who introduces something new or who favours novelty" or "An inexperienced person; a novice." However, the OED attributes the primary contemporary meaning of "a writer of novels" as first appearing in the 1633 book "East-India Colation" by C. Farewell citing the passage "It beeing a pleasant observation (at

3071-759: The 20th century, which is considered equivalent to American literary regionalism. It used a realist style to portray the scenes, language, customs and manners of the country the writer was from, especially the lower and peasant classes, criollismo led to an original literature based on the continent's natural elements, mostly epic and foundational. It was strongly influenced by the wars of independence from Spain and also denotes how each country in its own way defines criollo , which in Latin America refers to locally-born people of Spanish ancestry. Novelists often will be assessed in contemporary criticism based on their gender or treatment of gender. Largely, this has to do with

3154-470: The Author " that the author no longer should dictate the reception and meaning derived from their work. Other, theoretical approaches to literary criticism attempt to explore the author's unintentional influence over their work; methods like psychoanalytic theory or cultural studies , presume that the work produced by a novelist represents fundamental parts of the author's identity . Milan Kundera describes

3237-473: The Darcy, Portington, Lee, Stapleton, and Rogers families, all centred at Snaith , East Yorkshire; according to Richardson, the Robert Greene from Norwich who was an innkeeper may have been an immigrant from Yorkshire connected to 'a large family of Greenes' who lived in the parish of Snaith, and may actually have left Norwich to reside at Snaith from 1571 to 1577. There is no record of Greene's having taken part in

3320-537: The Elizabethan playwrights. Deloney probably died early in 1600, or perhaps late in the previous year. In Nine Daies Wonder , published in April 1600, William Kempe refers to a tune known as "Thomas Deloney's Epitaph", and writes that he (Kempe) had been the subject of "abominable Ballets" written by "the great Ballet-maker, T.D., alias Tho. Deloney." In a mocking address to the other ballad-writers of London, he concludes "I

3403-673: The Novel", sees the novelist as needing to "re-create reality in the forms which his personal vision assumes as it plays and struggles with the vivid illusory "eidetic-like" imagery left in the mind's eye by the process of social change." However, Ellison also describes novelists of the Lost Generation , like Ernest Hemingway , not taking full advantage of the moral weight and influence available to novelists, pointing to Mark Twain and Herman Melville as better examples. A number of such essays, such as literary critic Frank Norris 's "Responsibilities of

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3486-494: The actor with a quotation that appears in both the True Tragedy quarto and Shakespeare's Folio version of Henry VI, Part 3 , and uses the term "Shake-scene", a unique term never used before or after Greene's screed, to refer to the actor. The Oxford English Dictionary notes that it is "Of uncertain or vague meaning: used by Greene in his attack on Shakespeare". Some scholars have hypothesised that all or part of Groatsworth

3569-463: The alien and external as possible?" Robert Greene (dramatist) Robert Greene (1558–1592) was an English author popular in his day, and now best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, Greene's Groats-Worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance , widely believed to contain an attack on William Shakespeare . Greene was a popular Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer known for his negative critiques of his colleagues. He

3652-404: The author's life is presumed to have influence on the topical and thematic concerns of works. Some veins of criticism use this information about the novelist to derive an understanding of the novelist's intentions within his work. However, postmodern literary critics often denounce such an approach; the most notable of these critiques comes from Roland Barthes who argues in his essay " Death of

3735-560: The beginning of the 20th century while becoming linked as an individual to his depiction of that space. Similarly, novelist such as Mark Twain , William Faulkner , Eudora Welty , and Flannery O'Connor are often describe as writing within a particular tradition of Southern literature , in which subject matter relevant to the South is associated with their own identities as authors. For example, William Faulkner set many of his short stories and novels in Yoknapatawpha County , which

3818-497: The capital needed to market books by an unknown author to the public. Responding to the difficulty of successfully writing and publishing first novels, especially at a young age, there are a number of awards for young and first time novelists to highlight exceptional works from new and/or young authors (for examples see Category:Literary awards honouring young writers and Category:First book awards ). In contemporary British and American publishing markets, most authors receive only

3901-584: The controversy also note that by removing such categories as "Women novelist" or "Lesbian writer" from the description of gendered or sexual minorities, the discover-ability of those authors plummet for other people who share that identity. Similarly, because of the conversations brought by feminism, examinations of masculine subjects and an author's performance of "maleness" are a new and increasingly prominent approach critical studies of novels. For example, some academics studying Victorian fiction spend considerable time examining how masculinity shapes and effects

3984-471: The creation of French political and social identity in mid-nineteenth century France. Some novelists become intimately linked with a particular place or geographic region and therefore receive a place-based identity . In his discussion of the history of the association of particular novelists with place in British literature , critic D. C. D. Pocock, described the sense of place not developing in that canon until

4067-725: The day are a description of a fire that devastated the town of Beccles in Suffolk in November 1586; the confession of an adulterous wife in Devonshire who conspired to murder her husband in 1590; two accounts of the arrest and execution of the conspirators in the Babington Plot to overthrow the queen in 1586; and three ballads inspired by the campaign against the Spanish Armada in 1588, including one that describes Elizabeth's visit and address to

4150-563: The dedicatory epistle to Robert Lee and Roger Portington is signed "Robert Greene. From my Studie in Clarehall the vii. Of Julie". According to Newcomb, "Other events of [Greene's] youth must be derived from autobiographical remarks that may not be reliable". In The Repentance of Robert Greene , written in the first person, Greene claimed to have travelled to Italy and Spain; however, no evidence of Greene's continental trip has been found, "or—unless we take merely his word for it—that he ever made

4233-715: The dramatic productions at Cambridge in 1579 and 1580, although 18 of his classmates and Fellows of the Cambridge colleges acted in Hymenaeus , and 46 in Richardus Tertius . His academic performance as an undergraduate at Cambridge was mediocre; on 22 January 1580, he took his BA, graduating 38th out of 41 students in his college, and 115th out of the total university graduating class that year of 205 students. He "apparently transferred to Clare College for his 1583 MA", where he placed 5th out of 12 students in his college, and 29th of

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4316-653: The educated middle classes. However, working men and women began publishing novels in the twentieth century. This includes in Britain Walter Greenwood 's Love on the Dole (1933), from America B. Traven 's, The Death Ship (1926) and Agnes Smedley , Daughter of Earth (1929) and from the Soviet Union Nikolay Ostrovsky 's How the Steel Was Tempered (1932). Later, in 1950s Britain, came

4399-460: The exception rather than the norm. Other critics and writers defending the merits of genre fiction often point towards King as an example of bridging the gap between popular genres and literary merit. Both literary critics and novelists question what role novelists play in society and within art. For example, Eudora Welty writing in 1965 for in her essay "Must the Novelist Crusade?" draws

4482-495: The first authors in England to support himself with his pen in an age when professional authorship was virtually unknown. Greene's literary career began with the publication of a long romance, Mamillia , entered in the Stationers' Register on 3 October 1580. Greene's romances were written in a highly wrought style which reached its highest level in Pandosto (1588) and Menaphon (1589). Short poems and songs incorporated in some of

4565-549: The genre or within their own interests. In describing the place within the industry, novelist Kim Wright says that many authors, especially authors who usually write literary fiction, worry about "the danger that genre is a cul-de-sac" where publishers will only publish similar genre fiction from that author because of reader expectations, "and that once a writer turns into it, he'll never get out." Similarly, very few authors start in genre fiction and move to more "literary" publications; Wright describes novelists like Stephen King as

4648-741: The highly controversial The Wasp Factory in 1984. The success of this novel enabled Banks to become a full-time novelist. Often an important writers' juvenilia , even if not published, is prized by scholars because it provides insight into an author's biography and approach to writing; for example, the Brontë family 's juvenilia that depicts their imaginary world of Gondal , currently in the British Library , has provided important information on their development as writers. Occasionally, novelists publish as early as their teens. For example, Patrick O'Brian published his first novel, Caesar: The Life Story of

4731-566: The impacts of cultural expectations of gender on the literary market, readership and authorship. Literary criticism , especially since the rise of feminist theory , pays attention to how women, historically, have experienced a very different set of writing expectations based on their gender; for example, the editors of The Feminist Companion to Literature in English point out: "Their texts emerge from and intervene in conditions usually very different from those which produced most writing by men." It

4814-443: The literary movement of modernist literature . She argues that the novelist should represent "not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; [rather] life is luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of the conscious to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of

4897-413: The male novelist" that midlist male novelists are less likely to find success than midlist female novelist, even though men tend to dominate "literary fiction" spaces. The position of women in the literary marketplace can change public conversation about novelists and their place within popular culture, leading to debates over sexism. For example, in 2013, American female novelist Amanda Filipacchi wrote

4980-410: The mayor of the city, Stephen Slaney , in part because in it Deloney had the queen engage in a dialogue with her people "in a very fond and undecent sort", which might incite discontent among the poor. In the late 1590s Deloney turned to writing prose narratives, usually called novels in modern sources (although that word was not used by Deloney or his contemporaries). Four novels — Jack of Newbury ,

5063-460: The model for Shakespeare's Falstaff . His quotation has also been used as the title for the 2016 sitcom Upstart Crow on Shakespeare's life, written by Ben Elton , its story commencing in 1592 (the year the quotation was written) and featuring Greene as a character (played by Mark Heap ). In the Ben Elton -written sitcom, Upstart Crow , he is portrayed by Mark Heap as being alive following

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5146-460: The most exhaustive examination of Greene's dramatic canon, concluding that Greene is the most likely author of Locrine and that he co-authored Selimus . Greene is most familiar to Shakespeare scholars for his pamphlet Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit , which alludes to a line, "O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide", found in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3 ( c. 1591–92): ... for there

5229-497: The perspective of a repentant former rascal, have been considered autobiographical, and have been thought to incorporate many facts of Greene's own life thinly veiled as fiction: his early riotous living, his marriage and desertion of his wife and child for the sister of a notorious character of the London underworld, his dealings with players, and his success in the production of plays for them. However, according to Newcomb, in his later prose works "Greene himself built his persona around

5312-483: The plays published under his name after his death, Greene has been proposed as the author of several other dramas, including a second part to Friar Bacon which may survive as John of Bordeaux , The Troublesome Reign of King John , George a Greene , Fair Em , A Knack to Know a Knave , Locrine , Selimus , and Edward III , and even Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Henry VI plays. Authorship attribution specialist Darren Freebury-Jones has provided

5395-691: The political agendas of the Communist party or left wing sympathizers, and seen as a "device of revolution". However, the British tradition of working class literature, unlike the Russian and American, was not especially inspired by the Communist Party, but had its roots in the Chartist movement , and socialism , amongst others. Novelists are often classified by their national affiliation, suggesting that novels take on

5478-479: The relevant years are lost. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge , provided scholarships for students from the Norwich grammar school, and for this reason, Greene's matriculation as a sizar at St John's College, Cambridge , has been considered "strange". A reason offered for Greene's enrolment at St John's is that some of the gentry of South Yorkshire attended St John's, and among the dedicatees of, or authors of commendatory verses for Greene's books were members of

5561-481: The romances attest to his ability as a lyric poet. One song from Menaphon , Weep not my wanton, smile upon my knee , (a mother's lullaby to her baby son), enjoyed immense success and is now probably his best-known work. In his later " coney-catching " pamphlets, Greene fashioned himself into a well-known public figure, telling colourful inside stories of rakes and rascals duping young gentlemen and solid citizens out of their hard-earned money. These stories, told from

5644-411: The shoemakers, is a compilation of tales "showing what famous men have been Shoomakers in time past in this Land, with their worthy deeds and great Hospitality". The popularity of the latter inspired at least two dramatic adaptations of some of its material, Thomas Dekker's play The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599) and William Rowley 's A Shoemaker a Gentleman ( c.  1608 ?). Although Deloney

5727-405: The silk-weaving trade in 16th-century England, and the name Deloney, which looks like an anglicized form of a French name such as De Laune or De Lanoy, suggests that his family may have been relatively recent arrivals in England. An entry in the parish register of St Giles-without-Cripplegate from 16 October 1586 records the baptism of his son Richard, who may have died within a few months. During

5810-482: The social ambitions of Greene's early works. Both the Norwich cordwainer-turned-innkeeper and the Norwich saddler left wills, proved in 1591 and 1596 respectively, but neither will mentioned a son named Robert. However, Greene himself implied that he had been disinherited by his father. Greene is thought to have attended the Norwich Grammar School , although this cannot be confirmed as enrolment documents for

5893-399: The sole master of his work. He is his work." The close intimacy of identity with the novelist's work ensures that particular elements, whether for class, gender, sexuality, nationality, race, or place-based identity, will influence the reception of their work. Historically, because of the amount of leisure time and education required to write novels, most novelists have come from the upper or

5976-455: The tensions between the novelist's own identity and the work that the author produces in his essay in The New Yorker titled "What is a novelist?"; he says that the novelist's "honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania [...]The work is not simply everything a novelist writes-notebooks, diaries, articles. It is the end result of long labor on an aesthetic project[...]The novelist is

6059-522: The trip at all". Further doubt is cast on Greene's continental journey by Norbert Bolz, who after undertaking a computer analysis of the vocabulary of The Repentance , concluded that " The Repentance of Robert Greene was in fact not written by Robert Greene". In The Repentance , Greene claimed to have married a gentleman's daughter, whom he abandoned after having had a child by her and spent her dowry, after which she went to Lincolnshire , and he to London. In Four Letters (1592), Gabriel Harvey prints

6142-477: The troops at Tilbury . Deloney's writings on social and political issues sometimes created controversy. In 1595 he was briefly imprisoned as a result of his contribution to a letter signed by a group of yeoman weavers petitioning for stricter enforcement of the rules of the London Weavers' Company. And in 1596 a ballad on the scarcity of grain in London was criticized as "scurrilous" and "vain and presumptuous" by

6225-569: The two parts of The Gentle Craft , and Thomas of Reading — were published in the last three or four years of his life (1597–1600), and it is on these works that his modern reputation chiefly depends. They were enormously popular, so much so that the original printings were literally "read to pieces" and they survive today only in later 17th-century editions. Deloney's novels are a mixture of historical romance and social and economic realism, which draw heavily in their choice of subject matter, background, and incidental details on his personal experience as

6308-496: The way he makes use of these elements in relation to a part of the West of England, that he names Wessex . Other British writers that have been characterized as regional novelists, are the Brontë sisters , and writers like Mary Webb (1881–1927), Margiad Evans (1909–58) and Geraint Goodwin (1903–42), who are associate with the Welsh border region. George Eliot (1801–86) on the other hand

6391-951: The works, because of its prominence within fiction from the Victorian period. Traditionally, the publishing industry has distinguished between " literary fiction ", works lauded as achieving greater literary merit , and " genre fiction ", novels written within the expectations of genres and published as consumer products. Thus, many novelists become slotted as writers of one or the other. Novelist Kim Wright , however, notes that both publishers and traditional literary novelist are turning towards genre fiction because of their potential for financial success and their increasingly positive reception amongst critics. Wright gives examples of authors like Justin Cronin , Tom Perrotta and Colson Whitehead all making that transition. However, publishing genre novels does not always allow novelist to continue writing outside

6474-481: Was familiar with the elaborate euphuistic prose of John Lyly and his successors, and was capable of imitating it when he chose to, his style is normally more simple and straightforward. In its directness and vividness it owes something to the compilations of popular tales in contemporary jest books. He makes much greater use of dialogue than other contemporary writers of prose narratives, such as Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe , and shares some dramatic techniques with

6557-403: Was given since to understand, your late general Tho. dyed poorley, as ye all must do, and was honestly buried, which is much to be doubted of some of you." Nothing else is known of the date or circumstances of his death. Novelist Novelists come from a variety of backgrounds and social classes, and frequently this shapes the content of their works. Public reception of a novelist's work ,

6640-443: Was his name. Robert was one of the most popular given names of the era and Greene was a common surname. L. H. Newcomb suggests that Robert Greene "was probably the Robert Greene, son of Robert Greene, baptized on 11 July 1558 at St George's, Tombland, Norwich ." Greene later described himself as from Norwich on his title-pages, and the year is appropriate for the Robert Greene who enrolled at St John's College, Cambridge , as

6723-630: Was not a great critical success, its popularity among readers placed it on the New York Times Children's Books Best Seller list for 121 weeks. First-time novelists of any age often are unable to have their works published, because of a number of reasons reflecting the inexperience of the author and the economic realities of publishers. Often authors must find advocates in the publishing industry, usually literary agents , to successfully publish their debut novels . Sometimes new novelists will self-publish , because publishing houses will not risk

6806-754: Was respectable'. Richardson considers that Greene: claimed from the outset a moral or civilizing purpose in his writing. His tales repeatedly illustrate the disastrous disruptions caused in life by passion and laud the life of restraint. His views are basically conservative ... He equivocates and hesitates over the defence of the values of a conservative culture, virginity, true devotion, strict moral probity. In addition to his prose works, Greene also wrote several plays, none of them published in his lifetime, including The Scottish History of James IV , Alphonsus , and his greatest popular success, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay , as well as Orlando Furioso , based on Ludovico Ariosto 's Orlando Furioso . In addition to

6889-526: Was written shortly after Greene's death by Henry Chettle or another one of his fellow writers, hoping to capitalise on a lurid tale of death-bed repentance. Hanspeter Born argues that Greene wrote the whole of Groatsworth , and that his deathbed attack on the "upstart Crow" was provoked by Shakespeare's interference with a play attributed to Greene, A Knack to Know a Knave . Greene's colourful and irresponsible character has led some, including Stephen Greenblatt , to speculate that Greene may have served as

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