Tottel's Miscellany

His main business was the publication of law textbooks but his biggest contribution to English literature would come in the form of the anthology of poetry.

He also gave the public Surrey's translation of the second and fourth books of Virgil's Aeneid, which is the earliest known example of English blank verse.

The first edition of this work appeared on 5 June 1557 with the title Songes and Sonettes Written By the Ryght Honorable Lord Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, Thomas Wyatt the Elder and others.

Songs and Sonettes was the first of the poetic anthologies that became popular by the end of the 16th century, and is considered to be Tottel's 'great contribution to English letters',[2] as well as the first to be printed for the pleasure of the common reader.

[citation needed] The collection comprises mostly the works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Thomas Wyatt the Elder.

Both were heavily influenced by Italian poetry, although Wyatt's meter would be adapted to conventional English iambic stress by Tottel.

[5] Among these unknown authors, it is believed that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote at least one of the poems, titled in the anthology as, "To leade a vertuous and honest life."

Shakespeare uses some of its verses in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Hamlet, and directly quotes the anonymous poem "Against him that had slaundered a gentlewoman with him selfe", in The Rape of Lucrece: In the Miscellany the quote is Songes and Sonettes is also known as the most important English poetic collection in the 16th century and inaugurated a long series of poetic anthologies in Elizabethan England.