In a brief literary career occupying only fifteen years or so early in the sixteenth century, Alexander Barclay contributed importantly to bringing contemporary Continental literary culture home to England and, in cooperation with his printer/publisher Richard Pynson, to popularizing it. Best known as the first to write pastorals in English, modeling his work on that of Italian humanists, Barclay also introduced the German Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools into England in 1509 and wrote allegories in the manner of Burgundian court literature. Almost all of his writings are translations, if only nominally. In handling the sources he chose--not only Brant, but also his Italian contemporaries Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Giovanni Battista Spagnolo of Mantua, and Domenico Mancini, and the ancient historian Sallust--he inevitably added much of his own, fitting the work to his peculiar circumstance. These literary labors appear to have been undertaken in order to attract patronage, and...