Tottel's Miscellany - Contributors

Contributors

The collection comprises mostly the works of Henry Howard Surrey and Thomas Wyatt 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.

The star poet of Tottel's Miscellany, the Earl of Surrey, created the English sonnet form by modifying the Petrarchan sonnet. If the English sonnet is also called the Shakespearean sonnet, that can be attributed to Shakespeare's fame. The form which Surrey created (three quatrains in alternate rhyme and a concluding couplet) is easier to write in English than the Petrarchan form, with its more complex rhyme scheme.

Surrey and Wyatt's inclusion in Tottel's Miscellany would mark the first time either poet's work was printed. Other contributors include Nicholas Grimald, Thomas Norton, Thomas Vaux, John Heywood, Edward Somerset and other uncertain or unknown authors. 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." Although some of the wording has been altered slightly, this poem appears to be "a somewhat mutilated copy of Chaucer's ballad on "Truth.""

This is a sample of a poem found in the text by Sir Thomas Wyatt:.

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek,

With naked foot stalking within my chamber:

Once have I seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild, and do not once remember,

That sometime they have put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand ; and now they range

Busily seeking in continual change

(This poem refers to Elizabeth I's mother, Anne Boleyn. Wyatt wisely withdrew from the chase in favor of a more heavyweight suitor. Both had the problem of being already married, but the other suitor, Henry VIII, eventually solved that one). The first edition of Tottel's Miscellany (1557) featured forty poems by Surrey, ninety-six poems by Wyatt, forty poems by Grimald, and ninety-five poems written by unknown authors. Tottel made note that of those anonymous poems, the authors were sure to include Thomas Churchyard, Thomas Vaux, Edward Somerset, John Heywood and Sir Francis Bryan. It has been decided definitely that of those ninety-five poems, two were written by Vaux, one by John Heywood, and one by Somerset. The only first edition left is in the Bodleian Library in England. A reprint, which was limited to sixty copies, was edited by John Payne Collier in 1867. The second edition was also published in 1557; thirty of Grimald's poems were removed but thirty-nine additional ones were added to the "uncertain authors" category with a final tally of 281 poems. There are only two copies of this work in existence left, one in the Grenville Collection at the British Museum, the other at Trinity College, Cambridge. The next seven editions were all printed between 1558 and 1586, with the final ninth edition being published in 1587.