The Gentle Craft

Although it was probably conceived as a trilogy, only the first two parts of Thomas Deloney's prose romance were completed, dealing with the origins of the shoemaker's trade and how it succeeded in London. "The Gentle Craft" is best known as the principal source of Thomas Dekker's "The Shoemaker's Holiday". But Deloney's tale of Simon Eyre, who founded Leadenhall, the centre of the leather trade, and rose to be Lord Mayor of London, is itself significant for its adaptation of euphemistic romance