This article centres on the pamphlet The Life and Death of Griffin Flood informer (1623), which tells the career and execution through pressing of an informer and murderer working in early modern London. It outlines what archival research reveals about this figure, and thereby re-examines how far crime pamphlets were rooted in social actuality. Secondly, it shows that The Life and Death does not follow what historians have identified as the conventions of rogue literature and murder pamphlets, and that scholars’ treatment of cheap print has often overlooked its generic instability and inconsistency of tone. Finally, it highlights how the representation of Flood’s career as an informer casts new light on attitudes towards non-citizens within early modern London. The article concludes by arguing that The Life and Death (and many similar pamphlets) invoked communitarian understandings of justice, and emphasized neighbourliness, social peace, and charity, rather than the themes of redemption and divine retribution.

In its examination of the role of the press in the unfolding of seventeenth-century politics, the chapter analyses how new scholarship has reworked traditional areas of debate on the press and politics: the role of newspapers in the development of public opinion, the significance of print in the ‘news revolution’ and the almost exclusive focus on England (rather than Britain and Ireland) when examining the development of the periodical press. Although newspapers were intimately connected with politics throughout the seventeenth century as vehicles of political debate, propaganda, and diplomacy, recent works in this field have provided more nuanced accounts of newspapers’ potential for informing and shaping public opinion, as well as of censorship. In its description of the news reportage surrounding the 1696 assassination plot against William III, the case study shows that although newspapers were a site of public debate they were not a self-contained one.

Steven Carl Smith, An Empire of Print: The New York Publishing Trade in the Early American Republic. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2017. 264 pp. Bibliography. $29.95 pbk. - Volume 47 Issue 4

Early modern rogue literature presents historians with a puzzle. From the 1590s onwards, a steady flow of cheap pamphlets rolled off London printing presses to inform their audience about the innumerable scams, frauds, deceptions and confidence tricks practised by devious criminal tricksters: rogues. When these texts began to be compiled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scholars took them as descriptions of social reality. Shakespeare’s London, they presumed, really was teeming with unscrupulous swindlers. These rogues were highly organised, endlessly innovative, and spoke in a special jargon impenetrable to outsiders. In the second half of the 20th century, however, it became increasingly clear that this world of roguery was entirely fictional; there was no evidence for its existence outside the pamphlets themselves. So what were they really about?

Review of Photini Danou. Η Λερναία Ύδρα των Αχρείων: Τα πληβεία στρώματα στην αγγλική πολιτική σκέψη (1509-1625) [The hydra of the vile: plebeians in English political theory, 1509-1625]. Athens: Irodotos, 2017. 156 pp.

This article reconsiders ideas of the public sphere in the seventeenth century, by focusing on how public opinion is shaped by the movement of information between media and between receivers. It contends that the scholarly preoccupation with a public sphere viewed exclusively in terms of politics obscures the fact that contemporaries did not distinguish between politics and subjects such as crime in their newsgathering. Examining the case study of James Turner, a burglar in the 1660s who became a cause celebre in London and beyond, this article shows how crime news were eagerly exchanged, informing discussions and constructing public opinion.

is not a man who requires an introduction, but this new book by Kate Loveman provides a fresh look into Pepys's social life, by pointing out how this was shaped and expanded by Pepys's love for books.Kate Loveman has written extensively on Samuel Pepys and in this book she returns to this topic, using Pepys's case as an entryway into the reading practices and sociability of educated Londoners.The book follows a chronological structure, starting from the 1660s and the beginning of Pepys's diary, but also his rise in the administration; it finishes at the beginning of the 18th century, detailing Pepys's retirement, when he focused his energies on the expansion of his library.Nonetheless, this is not just another biography of Pepys: Loveman's focus is reading and sociability and she examines firstly how Pepys's changing status influenced his reading and collecting habits.Secondly, she investigates how Pepys's interests and practices were shared by other elite readers, and formed the basis for sociable exchanges between them.In this way, Loveman provides a comprehensive picture of Pepys's reading and information gathering, but also expands this analysis in order to examine other members of his social milieu.The main axis of Loveman's book is the interplay between reading and sociability.Through a painstaking analysis of printed and manuscript sources Loveman examines how reading and buying books fostered ties of sociability between members of the elite.The book begins with an analysis of the patterns of reading, and emphasises that texts were highly mobile and accessible: they were carried around, to be read aloud in company or silently, while walking, and they were shown to friends and acquaintances, providing a talking point.Loveman stresses that even those who did not buy books were not excluded from reading.Texts could be encountered in various places, such as news books and newsletters in barber shops and coffee shops, adverts and playbills on posts, prints and ballads in alehouses, and notices in the Exchange.These texts were found in spaces where people congregated, providing opportunities for discussion and sociability.Reading, and the sociability it facilitated, Loveman argues, could also be employed for self-advancement.The textual analysis learned at universities, which emphasised highlighting and memorising remarkable passages, provided individuals with the ability to make the most out of reading in a variety of contexts.Loveman examines how Pepys's love for philosophy helped him create bonds with other educated men,

Renaissance StudiesVolume 30, Issue 5 p. 789-790 Book Review John Scattergood, John Skelton: The Career of an Early Tudor Poet. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014. 356 pp. €55.00/£50.00. ISBN: 978-1846823374 (hb). Lena Liapi, Lena Liapi University of YorkSearch for more papers by this author Lena Liapi, Lena Liapi University of YorkSearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 April 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12145Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume30, Issue5November 2016Pages 789-790 RelatedInformation