Strangers at home: The Textual Construction of the Sherley Brothers

Abstract

During the first half of the seventeenth century various written accounts of the adventures of the three Sherley brothers – Thomas, Anthony and Robert – were published in England. These texts, in some cases written by the Sherleys themselves, often contributed to building an unproblematic and positive vision of the three brothers and their adventures in Persia, Turkey, and throughout Europe. However, an examination of the way in which all these texts (pamphlets, autobiographical writings, travel accounts, government documents, and private and official letters) interact with each other, together with the additional information provided by French and Spanish documents not accessible to an early modern audience in England, allows us to retrieve a Sherleyan narrative which, like the period in which it was produced, appears full of contradiction and new meanings.