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Re 16^th century England:

Men, and sometimes women, wrote for the amusement of themselves and their friends, not for publication.  Their verses were handed round, copied out into the manuscript books, of which many survive  in public and private libraries, and admired in a small circle.

Ward & Waller, eds. The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. III: Renascence and Reformation (1908), p. 180