The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Deloney, Thomas
(dl´n) (KEY) , c.1543c.1600, English ballad writer, fiction writer, and pamphleteer. He was a silk weaver. Deloneys chief works are three prose narrativesJack of Newbury, Thomas of Reading, and The Gentle Craft (all c.1597)relating to the clothiers, weavers, and shoemakers crafts respectively. Vivid and humorous, they reproduce bourgeois scenes of contemporary London. Their popularity indicates a certain fatigue with the elaborate prose of authors like John Lyly.