Richard Tottel, born around 1528 or 1530 in the bustling cathedral city of Exeter in Devon, emerged from modest provincial roots to become one of the most transformative figures in the history of English literature. Though his primary trade was the printing of law books—volumes that shaped the legal minds of Tudor England—his name endures as the visionary behind *Songes and Sonettes*, better known today as *Tottel’s…
“How unperfect the books of the laws of England were before, what price the scarceness had raised, the most part marvelously mangled, and no small part no where to be gotten.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Few composers in Western music history have lived through as much upheaval, as many transformations of faith and state, as Thomas Tallis—born around 1505 in Kent, England, and buried in 1585 in the quiet churchyard of St. Mary-at-Horn, London. To speak of Tallis is to speak of survival: not merely the survival of a man through plague, political intrigue, and religious civil war, but the survival of sacred music itsel…
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
