Tottel’s Miscellany:

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        Published in 1557 it was the first printed collection of miscellaneous English poems. It contained the work of the so-called courtly makers or poets, which had hitherto circulated in manuscript form for the benefit of the court.

        Tottel’s Miscellany takes its name from its publisher Tottel. Its original title was Songs and Sonnets; written by the Right Honourable Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Others, though Sir Thomas Wyatt contributed more poems to it than surrey (the first edition contained 96 pomes of Wyatt and 40 of Surrey).

         Tottel’s Miscellany is a collection of some three hundred lyrics. The lyrical forms are many. The outstanding is, however, the sonnet form which appeared for the first time in English in this collection. And it was Wyatt and Surrey who used this new form (i.e. sonnet).

         “The dominant theme both of the sonnets and songs is love sometimes the joys of the lover, nearly always his adoration of his mistress, and most commonly even when he is adoring, his complaints that his loved one treats him cruelly and that he is dying of despair.” There runs through all these poems the note of personal emotion- the note which is almost absent from medieval poetry, but which sounds loudly in the English lyrical poetry written since its publication. Where the theme is not love, it is generally the evanescence of the worldly pleasures and possession.

         Tottel’s Miscellany is a landmark in the history of English literature, because it marks the public beginning of modern English poetry. It ran into nine editions between 1557 and 1587, each new edition adding new poems. This testifies sufficiently to the popularity of the “courtly makers.”