The Complete Poems

Thomas Wyatt served at the court of Henry VIII in the most dangerous decades of the English Renaissance. He watched Anne Boleyn — widely believed to have been his own former lover — tried and executed. He was himself imprisoned twice in the Tower of London. Out of this life of court service, political peril, and unrequited desire, he produced poetry that changed the English language forever.

Wyatt was the man who brought the Petrarchan sonnet to England — taking the form from the Italian poets and reshaping it for the English court, for the English sensibility, and for the particular dangers of writing love poetry under a king who had recently executed two wives. His poems are remarkable for their directness, their psychological sophistication, and the way they turn personal political danger into enduring art.

This Penguin Classics complete edition, edited by R.A. Rebholz, is the standard scholarly text for the study of Tudor poetry and essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of the English literary tradition. A poet who deserves to be far better known. Published by Penguin Classics.