Introduction: From Printer to Reader

The pronouncement by Hyder Rollins that Tottel’s Miscellany is “one of the most important single volumes in the history of English literature” has long been accepted wisdom. ¹ By putting into print for the first time a large number of poems by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Miscellany introduced general readers to Italianate verse forms and spurred the rise of English Petrarchism in Elizabeth’s reign, such that, quoting Rollins again, “the beginning of modern English verse may be said to date from its publication in 1557” (2:5).