This collection of poetry published in 1557 wasn't the first book to put English poets in print, but the only examples of a predecessor anthology we have survive in a few scattered fragments. Tottel's Miscellany was printed three times in 1557 and six more before 1590, and several copies survive in tact.
In this book, first published the year before Queen Elizabeth I took the throne, a new class of Englishmen - urban, educated, and with aspirations for improving their lots in life that seem much more natural to us today than they had to Englishmen only a century earlier - gained access to the privately-circulated poetry of courtiers, including the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. This book introduced the form of the sonnet to a mass audience, leading to a sonnet craze in the 1590s and eventually to Shakespeare's sonnets.
More importantly, this book marks an entrepreneur's leveraging of a disruptive new communication technology to create a pop culture phenomenon.
GAFAnomics Season 2
