Another of Spain's great contributions to early modern European literature. The first picaresque novel (the name comes from the Spanish 'pícaro', a knave, rogue or rapscallion) was Lazarillo de Tormes, which was published anonymously as it was dangerously anti-clerical for its day: priests were depicted as being simply another corrupt, self-serving element of an unfair social structure preying on the underclass from which our antihero gradually rises by relying on his wits.

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (no relation to the roguish Welsh knicker-magnet singer) is the classic English example, though it came much later.