Songes and Sonettes, usually called Tottel's Miscellany, was the first printed anthology of English poetry. First published by Richard Tottel in 1557 in London, it ran to many editions in the sixteenth century.
Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey is generously represented in the miscellany, and credited with creating the English (or Shakespearean) form of sonnet.
Sir Thomas Wyatt contributed 96 poems to Tottel's Miscellany.
Thomas Vaux: one of his only two poems from the miscellany is misquoted in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Richard Tottel was an English publisher and influential member of the legal community. He ran his business from a shop located at Temple Bar on Fleet Street in London. The majority of his printing was centered on legal documents, but he is most known for a collection he edited and published in 1557 called Songes and Sonnettes.
The title page of Henry de Bracton's De legibus & consuetudinibus Angliæ (The Laws and Customs of England, 1st ed., 1569) which was one of Tottel's publications, as is indicated by the statement "Apud Richardum Tottellum". The phrase Cum priuilegio ("With privilege") at the bottom of the page refers to Tottel's exclusive patent to publish books on the common law.
