The Unfortunate Traveller: Or, the Life of Jack Wilton

The Unfortunate Traueller: or, The Life of Jacke Wilton is a picaresque novel by Thomas Nashe first published in 1594 but set during the reign of Henry VIII of England.


Jack Wilton adventures through the European continent and finds himself swept up in the currents of sixteenth-century history. Episodic in nature, the narrative jumps from place to place and danger to danger.


Jack begins his tale among fellow Englishmen at a military encampment, where he swindles his superiors out of alcohol and money, framing others as traitors. Commenting by the way on the grotesque sweating sickness, Jack arrives in Munster, Germany, to observe the massacre of John Leyden's Anabaptist faction by the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony; this brutal episode enables Nashe to reflect on religious hypocrisy, a theme to which he frequently returns.