author
active 1559-1577 John Awdelay
A sixteenth-century London printer and pamphleteer, he is best remembered for lively popular works that captured the voices and anxieties of everyday Tudor life. His writing on rogues and vagabonds became one of the best-known early English glimpses into the underworld of the streets.
2 Audiobooks
The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare's Youth Awdeley's 'Fraternitye of vacabondes' and Harman's 'Caveat'
by active 1559-1577 John Awdelay, active 1567 Thomas Harman
Awdeley's Fraternitye of Vacabondes, Harman's Caueat, Haben's Sermon, &c.
by active 1559-1577 John Awdelay, Parson Haben, active 1567 Thomas Harman
About the author
Active from 1559 to 1577, John Awdelay, more often spelled John Awdely or Awdeley, was an English printer in London as well as a writer of short, popular works. Records connect him with the Stationers' Company, and his publications ranged across prayers, newsy pamphlets, moral pieces, and other miscellaneous material aimed at a broad readership.
He is now chiefly remembered for The Fraternitye of Vacabondes, an influential pamphlet about wandering beggars, tricksters, and street life. The work helped preserve early cant terms and offered later readers a vivid, if moralizing, picture of Tudor England's margins.
Like many figures from the period, much about his personal life remains uncertain. What survives most clearly is the print record: a busy London producer of cheap, accessible texts whose work still interests historians of popular literature, printing, and everyday life in the sixteenth century.