English Character-Books of the Renaissance: An Anthology (review)

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article.This book presents examples of cameos or miniatures written by Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline wits, epigraphers and churchmen. It contains 'characteries' or character sketches and comprises selections from the large surviving body of this type of literature. Editors Peter Groves and Geoffrey Hiller have selected them from collections published in the first half of the seventeenth century. The original authors include bishops Joseph Hall and John Earle, Richard Flecknoe, Nicholas Breton and Sir Thomas Overbury. In most cases, the authorial identity of the passages is secure, although some passages attributed to Webster are of doubtful authorship.Although an abundance of these characteries survive, edited collections have appeared only rarely since the early twentieth century. The selections from these seventeenth-century writers present a wide-ranging account of personality types, including men and women, different ages (in fact the transition from childhood to youth to old age was a major theme in the character books), different professions, different social layers and persons from the country and city. Foreign nationalities are also represented, such as a French Dancing Master, with curiously, the Welsh also considered to be foreign from the point of view of the characteries' writers