Thomas Tusser - Literary Career

Literary Career

There he wrote A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, a long poem in rhyming couplets recording the country year. This work was first printed in London in 1557 by publisher Richard Tottel, and was frequently reprinted. Tottel published an enlarged edition Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie in 1573. Tusser includes a homely mix of instructions and observations about farming and country customs which offer a fascinating insight into life in Tudor England, and his work records many terms and proverbs in print for the first time. In this work, he also famously presents ten characteristics the perfect cheese must have:

Not like Gehazi, i.e., dead white, like a leper

Not like Lot's wife, all salt

Not like Argus, full of eyes

Not like Tom Piper, “hoven and puffed”

Not like Crispin, leathery

Not like Lazarus, poor

Not like Esau, hairy

Not like Mary Magdalene, full of whey or maudlin

Not like the Gentiles, full of maggots

Not like a Bishop, made of burnt milk

He never remained long in one place. For his wife's health he removed to Ipswich. After her death he married again, and farmed for some time at West Dereham. He then became a singing man in Norwich Cathedral, where he found a good patron in the dean, John Salisbury.