Richard Tottel
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Richard Tottel (d.1594) was an English publisher. His shop was located at Temple Bar on Fleet Street in London, and his original printing specialty was law. However, he is now remembered chiefly (if not solely) for his publication of a collection called Songes and Sonnettes in 1557.
Tottel's Miscellany, as the collection was later called, introduced to a broad English readership the relatively new poetic forms, the sonnet and canzone, that had developed in Italy during the 14th century. It included both translations from Italian poets, particularly Petrarch, and English poems written in imitation of the Petrarchan style. The collection was the first publication of the works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Thomas Wyatt, now considered the two greatest English poets of the Henrician period. A widely distributed second edition was published in 1565.
Tottel introduces the collection with his own preface, under the title, "The Printer to the Reader":
- That to have wel written in verse, yea & in small parcelles, deserveth great praise, the workes of divers Latines, Italians, and other, doe proue sufficiently. That our tong is able in that kynde to do as praiseworthely as the rest, the honorable stile of the noble earle of Surrey, and the weightinesse of the depewitted sir Thomas Wyat the elders verse, with severall graces in sondry good Englishe writers, doe show abundantly. It resteth nowe (gentle reder) that thou thinke it not evill doon it, to publish, to the honor of the Englishe tong, and for profit of the studious of Englishe eloquence, those workes which the ungentle horders up of such treasure have heretofore envied thee. And for this point (good reder) thine own profit and pleasure, in these presently, and in moe hereafter, shal answere for my defence. If parhappes some mislike the statelinesse of stile removed from the rude skill of common cares: I aske help of the learned to defend their learned frende, the authore of this work: And I exhort the unlearned, by reding to learne to be more skilfull, and to purge that swinelike grossenesse, that maketh the swete materome not to smell to their delight.
Tottel also published Thomas More's Utopia and a 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.
