The Rogue: Or, the Life of Guzman de Alfarache

1623

Shoults Ec 1623 A

London: Printed for Edward Blount

The Rev. William Arderne Shoults Collection is not just a collection of ecclesiastical volumes: sermons, church tracts, missals and breviaries, and the history of hymns. It contains books and manuscripts on many other subjects, a somewhat quirky collection on science, travel, philology, classical and modern literature. One such item is Mateo Alemán’s The Rogue, a very early picaresque but moralising novel depicting the life and adventures of Guzman de Alfarache, a street urchin. This is a variant copy of the first English language edition, printed in 1623 for Edward Blount (1562–1632), the London publisher associated with the Jaggards of the First Folio of Shakespeare fame (1623). Like his fellow Spanish countryman Cervantes, Alemán’s book was pirated, yielding very little money for him while alive.