Recently Read: The Pilgrim by William Thomas
William Thomas died in 1554, so this was a 16th century work - assuming the date and attribution to be correct. Though the version I read was a 19th century publication, edited, with notes, by the writer J. A. Froude. I read it as part of my (continuing) Tudor Mirror World investigations. The work was originally published in Italian, and is supposedly biographical. Thomas, a Welshman in Italy, got into an argument with some Italian men, where he had to staunchly defend the honour and actions of his recently deceased king, Henry VIII. He then wrote up an account of this and it was published in 1552. Perhaps the most interesting thing I found came in the preface to the actual text. I'll give my impression of the text itself beforehand though. It reads like an entirely fictional encounter. The narrative also lacks a bit of sense, as at first our writer has to explain very basic things about Britain to his Italian counterparts - such as the weather and the types of food grown. As if i...
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