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Tottel's Miscellany
Tottel's Miscellany
Jul 30, 2025 12:17 PM

Author:Amanda Holton,Amanda Holton,Tom MacFaul

Tottel's Miscellany

Songs and Sonnets (1557), the first printed anthology of English poetry, was immensely influential in Tudor England, and inspired major Elizabethan writers including Shakespeare. Collected by pioneering publisher Richard Tottel, it brought poems of the aristocracy - verses of friendship, war, politics, death and above all of love - into wide common readership for the first time. The major poets of Henry VIII's court, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, were first printed in the volume. Wyatt's intimate poem about lost love which begins 'They flee from me, that sometime did me seke', and Surrey's passionate sonnet 'Complaint of a lover rebuked' are joined in the miscellany by a large collection of diverse, intriguingly anonymous poems both moral and erotic, intimate and universal.

Reviews

When I finished reading this exhilarating, heartbreaking book, I realised that, in fact, I'd just read one of the best literary novels of the year

—— Stuart Kelly , Scotland on Sunday

Profoundly thoughtful... Zone One is a dark mirror, to be sure, but there is no doubt it is our own age that is being scrutinised here

—— New Statesman

Punchy cocktail of horror, comedy and social critique

—— Metro

A dark futuristic satire laced with fiendish humour

—— The Times

Often simultaneously arch and sombre, Whitehead's narrative flares with a sociological intelligence

—— Benjamin Evans , Daily Telegraph

What Whitehead does really well is anchor his apocalypse in the small, heartbreaking details of everyday humanity, giving his end-of-days a bleak, sad humour that is all its own

—— Alison Flood , Sunday Times

The zombie sub-genre is all the rage, but Zone One elevates the popular trope with its harrowing tale of life, loss and hope in a post-zombie apocalypse Manhattan. As satirical and gut-wrenchingly emotional as it is horrific, Zone One is the zombie tale at its literary best

—— SciFi Now

It's tense, suspenseful and terrifying... Yet, he's also very funny at times and anyone who has ever had dealings with a HR department will appreciate his asides at the zombies in personnel

—— Ann Marie Stanton , Irish Independent

Whitehead's witty spin on the zombie apocalypse is an enjoyable read and is highly recommended

—— Zombies and Toys

It's monochromatically unsettling and blackly comic, as any zombie-related fiction should be. It's also one of the most gut-wrenchingly emotional reads of the year, with tragedy complex and inevitable enough to be Shakespearian... the tension is through the roof. The humour is perfectly pitched... He uses the entire situation to skewer and satirise... But where Zone One truly flourishes is in its depiction of the heartbreaking loss; loss of the chance to be simply mundane, loss of a perfectly formed stronghold and the relationships built up within. At moments like these, the book is quite startlingly, heartbreakingly beautiful, regardless of the subject matter... Whitehead's prose is engrossing, simultaneously verbose and casual enough to stroll off the page and shake your hand... even George A Romero would have to marvel at Zone One... what'll be more interesting is whether Whitehead will ever write anything as astounding as this again

—— Gareth Hughes , SciFi Now

Whitehead's witty spin on the zombie apocalypse is an enjoyable read and is highly recommended

—— Zombies and Toys

It's monochromatically unsettling and blackly comic, as any zombie-related fiction should be. It's also one of the most gut-wrenchingly emotional reads of the year, with tragedy complex and inevitable enough to be Shakespearian... the tension is through the roof. The humour is perfectly pitched... He uses the entire situation to skewer and satirise... But where Zone One truly flourishes is in its depiction of the heartbreaking loss; loss of the chance to be simply mundane, loss of a perfectly formed stronghold and the relationships built up within. At moments like these, the book is quite startlingly, heartbreakingly beautiful, regardless of the subject matter... Whitehead's prose is engrossing, simultaneously verbose and casual enough to stroll off the page and shake your hand... even George A Romero would have to marvel at Zone One... what'll be more interesting is whether Whitehead will ever write anything as astounding as this again

—— Gareth Hughes , SciFi Now

1Q84 is certainly an engrossing, other-worldly mystery to lose yourself in, with a good deal of humour and a considerable thiller-esque page turning pull... Reading it is an intense and addictive experience, and this is no mean feat at all. However, it is also far more than that- it's a highly ambitious work, which raises more questions than it resolves in its intricate plot. A more optimistic take on George Orwell's 1984, kicking off in April that year just like the latter's dystopia, it is concerned with postmodern issues such as the rewriting of the past and the slippery dividing line between fact and fiction, exploring just how uncertain our grasp of reality can be, especially as the world we were born into morphs into somewhere quite different.... For all its fantasy surface and sexy details, this is a work of considerable and haunting complexity, which is likely to resonate a long time after one has stopped turning its numerous pages.

—— Madeleine Minson , Standpoint

Contains enough of his weird offbeat allure to satisfy devotees

—— Benjamin Evans , Sunday Telegraph

Portrayed in a fluid language that veers from the vernacular . . . to the surprisingly poetic.

—— San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
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