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
Thomas Stanley, born on 3 September 1625 and dead on 12 April 1678, was one of the most cultivated English writers of the seventeenth century: a lyric poet of the Cavalier age, a translator of Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish literature, an editor of Aeschylus, a patron and friend of writers, and the author of the first substantial history of philosophy written in English. His name has never carried the imm…
“There is not any thing more difficult to be retrieved out of the Ruins of Antiquity than the Learning of the Eastern Nations, and particularly that of the Chaldaeans.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
