Described by Colin Burrow as 'the richest surviving record of early
Tudor poetry and of the literary activities of 16th-century women, ' the
Devonshire Manuscript (BL MS Add. 17492) is a verse miscellany belonging
to the 1530s and early 1540s, including some 194 items including
complete poems, verse fragments and excerpts from longer works,
anagrams, and other ephemeral jottings attributed to Thomas Wyatt, Henry
Howard Earl of Surrey, Lady Margaret Douglas, Richard Hattfield, Mary
Fitzroy (née Howard), Thomas Howard, Edmund Knyvett, Anthony Lee, and
Henry Stewart, as well transcriptions of the work of others or original
works by prominent court figures such as Mary Shelton, Lady Margaret
Douglas, Mary (Howard) Fitzroy, Lord Thomas Howard, and, possibly, Anne
Boleyn. This edition publishes the contents of the manuscript in their
entirety, documenting well the manuscript's place as the earliest
sustained example in English of men and women writing together in a
community.