The packaging and consumption of literary exclusivity in Richard Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes

The 1557 publication of Richard Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes has been heralded as a watershed in English literary history. Much remains to be discovered regarding the background and production methods that produced “Tottel’s Miscellany”. The activities of the mid-Tudor correctors and journeymen in the Temple Bar workshop of the ambitious young Stationer are also of continuing interest. Tottel’s shop was at the Hand and Star, close to the heart of the London legal community. It was in this location that the first copies of the book were printed and advertised for sale to its earliest intended readers. The identity of the ‘Tottel editor’ who oversaw the book’s production has been the subject of much speculation. So too have the circumstances surrounding the rapid and drastic refashioning of Songes and Sonettes for its second and subsequent editions within eight weeks of its first publication. The essay explores these issues and offers a new account of the packaging and likely consumption of elite literary verse of an exclusive and scholarly nature. It was through Tottel’s initiative as a printer and the work of business associates in Temple Bar and further afield that such poetry was made more widely available in print for interested readers in Mary Tudor’s London.