Tottel’s Miscellany (1567)
Songes and Sonettes written by the right honorable Lord Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and others was published in 1567 by Richard Tottel (c. 1528–1693). Known as ‘Tottel’s Miscellany’, this volume was the first printed anthology of vernacular verse in England. Tottel’s Miscellany helped to establish a vernacular lyric tradition in print in England; contributors to the volume included Henry Howard (1516/17–1547), Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt (c. 1503–1542), two of the earliest writers of the sonnet in English.
This copy of Tottel’s Miscellany is from the collection of George John, Second Earl Spencer (1758–1834). The Spencer Collection, purchased for the sum of £250,000 in 1892 by Enriqueta Augustina Rylands (1843–1908), was at the time acknowledged to be the finest library in private ownership, especially notable for its outstanding collection of early printed books.
Portrait of George John, Second Earl Spencer
Jacob Thompson, George John, Second Earl Spencer. Oil on canvas. 44 × 34 cm. John Rylands Research Institute and Library.
Spencer actively sought to ‘improve’ his books, swapping leaves with fellow collectors and having made-up copies rebound. It is therefore likely that Spencer himself was responsible for tipping in the two portraits in this copy.
Certainly, this copy of Tottel’s Miscellany is unusual insofar that, unlike the other objects in this exhibition, we are given some insight into the extra-illustrator’s process. The following appears on a loose slip of paper accompanying the copy:
Prefixed to the Nenia of Sir Thomas Wyat, published very soon after his death, is a wooden print of him, by Holbein, which sells for five guineas; from that print this plate was engraved. Who this plate belongs to, I do not know; I guess Thane. I gave Thane seven shillings & 6d. for this print.
As it was Thane who sold the print, it is possible to establish that this book was extra-illustrated some time before Thane’s death in 1818.
The Portraits in the Copy
There are other existing extra-illustrated copies of Tottel’s Miscellany. A 1585 edition of the work, previously owned by Thomas Grenville (1755–1846) and held at the British Library (shelfmark: G.11173), has a tipped-in frontispiece portrait of Howard, created c. 1780–1830 after another portrait by Holbein. One 1717 edition, owned by Edward Skegg (1773–1842), bibliophile and confidential clerk at Coutts Bank, is recorded as having a ‘portrait added’. Book collectors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries evidently wished to have a visual reminder of the pioneering authors who inaugurated English Renaissance verse within their personal copies of Tottel’s Miscellany.
Further Reading
Sotheby, S. Leigh, Catalogue of the Singularly Curious, Very Interesting, and Valuable Library of Edward Skegg (London: Wellington Street, 1842)
This viewer includes the tipped-in portrait of Henry Howard directly preceding the title page, along with the dedicatory epistle ‘To the reader’.
This viewer also includes the portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt, tipped in between sigs. C.ii. (verso) and C.iii. (recto) [i.e. folios 18 and 19], along with the recto and verso of a loose slip of paper, annotated in a nineteenth-century hand and included within the volume.