"The first comprehensive biography of Henry Howard, Poet Earl of Surrey, this book fills a major gap in the history of early modern British culture. Sessions's powerful narrative combines historical scholarship with close readings of poetic texts and Tudor paintings, to explore the remarkable life of the man who was heir to the greatest title outside the royal family but who was beheaded in 1547 on the orders of Henry VIII. The first cousin of Queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard (and an influence on his young cousin the Princess Elizabeth), Surrey personified the contradictions of the courtier's role, through his standing both as a representative of the older nobility and as a poet who wrote innovative texts and created two of the most enduring poetic forms in England: the English sonnet and blank verse. Drawing on Surrey's poems, with their redefinition of the courtly role for the new age, and on his portraits, military campaigns, and political activities, Sessions reveals him as England's first embodiment of the Renaissance courtier, and at the same time as a poet writing and inventing in the midst of radical violence."--BOOK JACKET.