Nashe’s Lenten Stuff

work by Nashe

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June 30, 2026

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Nashe's Lenten Stuffe is a 1599 pamphlet by Thomas Nashe. It is written in praise of herrings and includes a charming description of Yarmouth, Norfolk, and its herring fishery. Nashe was a prominent Elizabethan writer known for his inventive prose style, often characterized by its colloquialisms, neologisms, and eccentricities. He was involved in various literary controversies of his time, including the Marprelate controversy, and his works were sometimes ordered to be suppressed. Nashe's Lenten Stuffe is considered one of his successful works, alongside others like The Unfortunate Traveller and Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell.12

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Thomas Nashe
Lenten Stuffe, in praise of herrings, contains a charming description of the town of Yarmouth, Norfolk, a herring fishery. Nashe retreated to Yarmouth when he and Ben Jonson were prosecuted as a result of their satirical play The Isle of Dogs (1597).
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Lenten Stuffe, in praise of herrings, contains a charming description of the town of Yarmouth, Norfolk, a herring fishery. Nashe retreated to Yarmouth when he and Ben Jonson were prosecuted as a result of their satirical play The Isle of Dogs (1597).
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English literature
Prose styles, 1550–1600
…The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), and Nashe’s Lenten Stuff (1599), the latter a pamphlet in praise of herring. Nashe’s “extemporal vein” makes fullest use of the flexibility of colloquial speech and delights in nonsense, redundancy, and disconcerting shifts of tone, which demand an answering agility from the reader. His language is…
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…The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), and Nashe’s Lenten Stuff (1599), the latter a pamphlet in praise of herring. Nashe’s “extemporal vein” makes fullest use of the flexibility of colloquial speech and delights in nonsense, redundancy, and disconcerting shifts of tone, which demand an answering agility from the reader. His language is…
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