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William Baldwin
Beware the Cat
The First English Novel
$7.95, £4.95 paperback
978-0-87328-154-6
Available Now
160 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 2 line illustrations
January 1995, Available worldwide
Categories: Literary Studies; English Literature; Renaissance Literature
January 1995, Available worldwide
Categories: Literary Studies; English Literature; Renaissance Literature
"Delightfully odd and astonishingly complex . . . the last of Professor Ringler's many benefactions to Renaissance scholarship."—Times Literary Supplement
"This text . . . richly deserves wider circulation, providing new light on the development of humanist narrative self-consciousness, and an arcane delight for cat-lovers."—Review of English Studies
"Beware the Cat is arguably the most enjoyable work to come out of the brief Reformist days of Edward VI, a satire that is by turns robust and sly, direct and wildly—I am tempted to say eccentrically—witty. . . . Ringler and Flachmann have supplied us with a definitive text, with an absorbing and helpful introduction, and with full and useful notes; and in this, they have made a significant contribution."—Modern Philology
"Beware the Catis a very cunning piece of work.—New York Times Book Review
"This text . . . richly deserves wider circulation, providing new light on the development of humanist narrative self-consciousness, and an arcane delight for cat-lovers."—Review of English Studies
"Beware the Cat is arguably the most enjoyable work to come out of the brief Reformist days of Edward VI, a satire that is by turns robust and sly, direct and wildly—I am tempted to say eccentrically—witty. . . . Ringler and Flachmann have supplied us with a definitive text, with an absorbing and helpful introduction, and with full and useful notes; and in this, they have made a significant contribution."—Modern Philology
"Beware the Catis a very cunning piece of work.—New York Times Book Review
Beware the Cat (1533) is the earliest original piece of long prose fiction in English. It has the distinction of being the first English "novel," far surpassing in narrative sophistication such immediate predecessors as Elyot's Image of Governance or Borde's Scoggin's Jests. This edition, besides providing a modernized text of the novel, also identifies the pseudonymous author of Beware the Cat as William Baldwin, better known as editor and principal author of the enormously popular Mirror for Magistrates (1559). The development of early English prose fiction is thoroughly documented in two informative and wide-ranging appendices. William Baldwin's place in this tradition, as well as his innovative narrative art, is discussed in the introduction, which also provides biographical information on the author, historical background to his novel, and insight into the political and religious turmoil of the middle years of the sixteenth century.