According to his great-nephew Anthony à Wood, whose biographical sketch of George Pettie in Athenae Oxonienses (1691-1692) contains most of what is known about his life, Pettie was, in his time, "excellent for his passionate penning of amorous stories, equal for poetical invention with his dear friend William Gager, and as much commended for his neat stile as any of his time." By 1692, however, Pettie's work had worn so badly that Wood claimed to keep his copy of A Petite Palace of Pettie His Pleasure (1576) out of family sentiment: "'Tis so far now from being excellent or fine, that it is more fit to be read by a schoolboy or rustical amoratto, than by a gentleman of mode or language." Centuries of critical neglect of A Petite Palace were disrupted by Friedrich Landmann's pronouncement in 1880 that the book anticipated, "to the minutest detail, all the specific elements of...