Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey

EMLS, 6.2, Sept 2000 Sesson's readings of the poetry and other arts make fine use of the biographical and historical groundwork he has laid in anticipation ... Session's book succeeds where most biographies fell, dispensing with the standard hyperbole only to justify it in the end ... Sessions has done much to give readers a strong sense of the prospects and rewards of immersion in Surrey's life and art.

EMLS, 6.2, Sept 2000 first comprehensive biography of the Earl of Surrey in 450 years ... when Sessions deals with the imaginative effects of visual spectacles, art and ceremony alike ... he is in his element.

J.F.R. Day, The Sewanee Review, 'Sessions has taken up the unenviable task of joining two disparate disciplines, literature and history. The thoroughness of his footnotes testifies to his awareness of the difficulty of this responsibility The important thing is that Sessions has managed to reconstruct the mental world of a man whose historical role was almost as significant as was his literary achievement.'

John Mulryan, Ben Jonson Journal Sessions makes a convincing case for Surrey's central role in reshaping English poetry. He is particularly insightful in his analysis of Surrey's Italian sources for blank verse ... Ultimately, Sessions' masterly narrative of the poet Earl cannot unravel the contradictions inherent in Surrey's own life. But it is a tale well told, finely conceived and skillfully enacted.

J. Christopher Warren, Moreana Vol. 36 'the reward of Sessions' method is enormous. Its complexity does justice to the complexity of its subject: "the most avant-garde figure" of early Tudor EnglandSessions' analyses of Surrey's poems are characteristically exact, but they are now all the more insightful because they at once inform and are informed by a fully articulated cultural and biographical context. copious documentation and discerning interpretations the major achievement in historical biography and literary history that Sessions' book represents. Both for its thorough study of Surrey's life and legacy, and for the bold enterprise of its aims and methods, Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey is necessary reading for scholars of the Tudor period.'

John Mulryan, Ben Jonson Journal Marked by erudition, enthusiasm, and an elegant style, Sessions' new biography is eminently readable and refreshingly innovative in its approach.

Elizabeth Heale, Renaissance Studies, Vol.14, No.3, 2000. this richly detailed and deeply engaged and engaging new biography.

Robert C. Braddock, Renaissance Quarterly 'In this carefully documented "cultural biography" W.A. Sessions reveals a Surrey far more complex than previously depicted.'

Elizabeth Heale, Renaissance Studies, Vol.14, No.3, 2000. Sessions is a brilliant analyst of ... visual representations and their significance, attempting to peer through the careful arrangements of surface and emblem to the always tantalizingly absent self beyond. In t...

Preface by David Starkey; Foreword; Prologue; PART I; 1. The fathers: two battles; 2. The mother; 3. The other Henry: Windsor and France; 4. The deaths of 1536; PART II; 5. Mount Surrey; 6. The audience at Surrey House: lyrics and lives; 7. The Countess of Surrey; 8. Imprisonments; 9. A new body of honour: Sir Thomas Wyatt; 10. The origins of blank verse; 11. 'Lieutenant General of the King'; 12. The shame of St Etienne; PART III; 13. Surrey's last portrait; 14. The final days; 15. 'Retailed to posterity': a conclusion; Notes; Index