Tottel's Miscellany - Richard Tottel

Richard Tottel

Richard Tottel was an English publisher with a shop at Temple Bar on Fleet Street in London. 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. He is responsible too for the first edition printed of Cicero's De Officiis in 1556 by Nicholas Grimald, who would later contribute to the poetry anthology.

Tottel also published Thomas More's Utopia and another collection of More's writings, John Lydgate's translations from Giovanni Boccaccio, and books by William Staunford and Thomas Tusser. The majority of his publications were legal treatises, including a legal history of the reign of Richard III, and legal yearbooks covering parts of the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI.