ABSTRACT
Elsewhere I have discussed the Elizabethan tradesman's concern for learning and the handbooks which were designed to help him acquire the information and culture so keenly desired.1 During this period the English merchant class became increasingly conscious of the utility of language study, both of their native tongue and the languages of the countries with which they traded. Numerous conversation and letter manuals helped improve native speech and epistolary style. Travel books frequently provided useful foreign phrases and word lists, the essential rudiments of foreign communication. At home and abroad, the Tudor and Stuart tradesman busied himself in a serious effort to enlarge his vocabulary and add to his fluency of speech.
