English prose fiction before the novel: the euphuists, Sidney's Arcadia, Nashe, Deloney's weavers and the pamphlets that fed Shakespeare's plots. Jusserand was a French diplomat and scholar who wrote about English literature from the inside and knew the sixteenth century better than most Englishmen. He is excellent on Deloney and on the reading habits of apprentices. Sixty plates from Turner to Millais and Maclise bring the Elizabethan stage, London streets and the sixteenth-century world Jusserand describes into the book as pictures.