Tottel's Miscellany

Tottel's Miscellany

A number of early Elizabethan poems and sings were printed and published together by Mr. Richard Tottel, under the title song and sonnets written by the honorable Lord Henry Howard also known as Earl Of Surrey. These volume is popularly known as Tottel's Miscellany which was found to certain poems mainly from Wyatt and Surrey. The first 32 pages of the Miscellany contains 36 poems by Surrey were followed by Wyatt's poem. The sonnets of of Wyatt and Surrey seems to go together in Tottel's Miscellany. Apart from them,the other contributors were Nicholas Grinald, Thomas Lord Vaux and others. One hundred and thirty (130) poems which were included in the Miscellany were by anonymous poet and some of whom might have been identified as William Thynne, Sir Thomas Bryama and Thomas Churchyard.

There were love poems, sonnets in the Petrarchan convention of Wyatt and Surrey as also the songs of complaints about feminist fickleness and fraility. Tottle's Miscellany was the first surviving printed communication of poetry to a great variety of readers. It presents different types of works and there by indicates different poetical influence and inclinations at work in the early days of the Renaissance. Tottel's Miscellany helped by the process of printing , at least managed to preserve the works that had to create their remarkable tradition in English Poetry.