SOURCE: "Thomas Nashe; The Picaresque and Realistic Novel," in The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, translated by Elizabeth Lee, T. Fisher Unwin, 1890, pp. 287-327.

In the following excerpt from his study of the development of the English novel, Jusserand offers an introduction to Nashe's life and his major prose work, The Unfortunate Traveller, arguing that it is an early example of the picaresque in English.

…. Thomas Nash made one of that group of young men, full of spirit, fire and imagination, who shone during the first part of Shakespeare's career, who fancied they could live by their pen, and who died prematurely and miserably. Nash was about thirty-three years old when he died in 1600; Marlowe was twenty-nine, Peele thirty, Greene thirty-two.

Nash was born at Lowestoft in 1567:¹ "The head towne in that iland is Leystofe, in which, bee it knowne to all men, I was borne...