Author Description

By turns witty and inane, crude and learned, scurrilous and moralistic, jestbooks offer an important and often overlooked viewpoint on the lives of women in early modern England. This volume reproduces seven jestbooks with connections to early modern Englishwomen as well as showing something of the broad genre itself. Four have a direct connection to women through their jests and framing (Wyddow Edyth, VVestward for Smelts, Long Meg of VVestminster, and Pasqvils Iests), excerpts from two books specifically focus on women in some sections (The Schoolemaster and Wits Fittes and Fancies) and the volume also includes the extremely popular, general jestbook (A C. Mery Talys).