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The “Lives of the Saints” is a never-published work promised by the pseudonymous “Pasquill” in his contributions to the print campaign to combat the influence of the Puritan Martin Marprelate tracts (1588–89). While it began as a polemical fiction, the “Lives of the Saints” evidently did exist in the form of a working compilation of unflattering anecdotes illustrative of Puritan hypocrisy and absurdity. This article argues that these notes were incorporated into Almond for a Parrat (1590), and that their appearance in this pamphlet was necessitated by a shift in the target of the anti-Martinist campaign away from attacks on Puritans generally and toward one named reformer, John Penry. Furthermore, the article suggests that “Pasquill” and the author of Almond for a Parrat are the same person, Thomas Nashe, and that reading Almond for a Parrat as a pastiche that evolved in the process of composition not only helps date the writing of the pamphlet but also explains a structural miscellaneity unusual even among the corpus of anti-Martinist polemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1579, the fifteen-year-old Robert Sidney (1563-1626) journeyed to the Continent to complete his education. His teachers were not the only ones with advice for him. Robert's father, his older brother Philip, and Philip's friend Hubert Languet all offered opinions on the books he should read and the studies he should pursue. This article sketches the humanist reading program the Sidney family urged upon the young Robert, then edits a manuscript catalogue (c.1579-80) that documents the kinds of books available to him as he sought to follow all this family advice. The manuscript is located among the Sidney family papers, and this article argues for the association with Robert, who likely acquired it during one of this three trips to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1579-80. Compiled by the Birckmanns of Cologne and Antwerp, a major printer/bookseller dynasty, this manuscript booklist is edited and discussed here for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]