Shakespeare's sonnets
The primary source of Shakespeare’s sonnets is a quarto published in 1609 titled "Shakespeare’s Sonnets." It contains 154 sonnets, which are followed by the long poem "A Lover's Complaint". Thirteen copies of the quarto have survived in fairly good shape from the 1609 edition, which is the only edition; there were no other printings. There is evidence in a note on the title page of one of the extant copies that the great Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn bought a copy in June 1609 for one shilling.
Thomas Thorpe
In 1609, Thorpe published the most important work of his career, Shakespeare's "Sonnets." His apparent disregard for Shakespeare's permission earned him a poor reputation, although modern author Katherine Duncan-Jones has argued that he was not such a "scoundrel" as he was portrayed, and the amiable and admirable Blount would certainly not associate with him if he were a scoundrel. It has even been suggested that Shakespeare "did" sell his manuscript to Thorpe, because of his acquaintance with Jonson as an actor in "Sejanus," who may have recommended Thorpe to him as a good publisher. The dedication, which is addressed to a mysterious Mr. W.H., may have been written either by Shakespeare himself or by Thorpe. Thorpe was probably responsible for the arrangement of the sonnets, with 1-17 being the "procreation sonnets", 18-126 being love sonnets to the Fair Youth (for the most part), and 127-154 being written on a variety of subjects, including politics, sex, and the Dark Lady. Critics have failed to agree whether or not his arrangement was the most apt, but most detect a logical coherence in the order, which is generally retained today. The possibility that the manuscript was provided to Thomas Thorpe by a needy “MR. W. H.,” the dedicatee of the volume and the poems’ possible recipient, seems seldom to have been explored.