Cony-catchers and Bawdy Baskets

This lively Penguin Classics volume gathers the racy pamphlets, rogue literature, and jest-books of Elizabethan England, opening a window onto the bustling, often disreputable life of 16th-century London. “Cony-catching” tracts exposed the tricks of swindlers and pickpockets, while bawdy tales and popular anecdotes reveled in the humor, vice, and vitality of the streets. Together they reveal a world of apprentices, courtesans, sharpers, and confidence men, rendered in vigorous prose that blends moral warning with sheer entertainment. Edited and introduced by a distinguished scholar of Renaissance literature, the collection offers valuable context for understanding early modern popular culture and the origins of English prose fiction. It will appeal to readers interested in social history, Shakespeare’s England, and the colorful underworld that thrived alongside it.