Richard Tottel

Printer, based in London, UK. From his shop at the Star in Hand inn at Temple Bar, Fleet St, he published Thomas More's Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulacion (1553), John Lydgate's The Falls of Princes (1554), and the Earl of Surrey's translations of parts of the Aeneid. He also compiled an anthology of contemporary Elizabethan poetry, Songes and Sonettes (1557), containing the chief works of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, which came to be known as Tottel's Miscellany. He was an original member of the Stationer's Company, founded in 1557.

Richard Tottel (d.1594) was an English publisher.

Tottel's Miscellany, as the collection was later called, introduced to a broad English readership the relatively new poetic forms, the sonnet and canzone, that had developed in Italy during the 14th century. It included both translations from Italian poets, particularly Petrarch, and English poems written in imitation of the Petrarchan style. The collection was the first publication of the works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Thomas Wyatt, now considered the two greatest English poets of the Henrician period. That our tong is able in that kynde to do as praiseworthely as the rest, the honorable stile of the noble earle of Surrey, and the weightinesse of the depewitted sir Thomas Wyat the elders verse, with severall graces in sondry good Englishe writers, doe show abundantly. It resteth nowe (gentle reder) that thou thinke it not evill doon it, to publish, to the honor of the Englishe tong, and for profit of the studious of Englishe eloquence, those workes which the ungentle horders up of such treasure have heretofore envied thee. If parhappes some mislike the statelinesse of stile removed from the rude skill of common cares: I aske help of the learned to defend their learned frende, the authore of this work: And I exhort the unlearned, by reding to learne to be more skilfull, and to purge that swinelike grossenesse, that maketh the swete materome not to smell to their delight.

Tottel also published Thomas More's Utopia and a collection of More's writings, John Lydgate's translations from Giovanni Boccaccio, and books by William Staunford and Thomas Tusser.