Zelauto (1580), his only original work of prose fiction, has importance in the early development of the novel, and Munday's prose, at its best, displays a clarity and economy of expression remarkable for the period.
The exact date of Munday's birth remains unknown, but he was probably born a few days before 13 October 1560, the date of his baptism, in the parish of St. Gregory. His father, Christopher Munday, a freeman of the Draper's Company who worked as a stationer, died young. His mother, Jane, died soon after, and Anthony was apprenticed in 1576 to the stationer John Allde.
While in Allde's employment Munday made an unpromising literary debut with a commendatory poem, "See, Gallants, See This Gallery of Delights," which appeared in the unsuccessful miscellany titled Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578). A moral pamphlet, The Defense of Poverty (now lost), soon followed, and in September 1578 Richard Jones licensed The Pain of Pleasure (1580), a dreary set of poems almost certainly by Munday, describing the horrid consequences of all pleasures. Allde, who had published none of those books, perhaps thought he could profit from his young apprentice's talent: he was fined that year for printing without a license "Munday's Dream," perhaps one of the ballads that later earned Munday the ridicule of Ben Jonson and John Marston.
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