Angel Day was an Elizabethan rhetorician, scholar, and writer active during the late sixteenth century. While details of his personal life remain poorly documented, records indicate he was apprenticed to the stationer Thomas Duxell in December 1563, suggesting a birth date between 1546 and 1550. He later married Frauncis Warley in December 1581. Day operated within the vibrant literary and publishing culture of early modern London, securing the patronage of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, to whom he dedicated multiple editions of his work.\n\nDay's enduring reputation rests primarily on his landmark publication, The English Secretary (1586). This work was the first comprehensive epistolary manual to employ original English examples rather than relying on traditional classical models. Designed as an instructional guide, the book was marketed toward the expanding business and middle classes of late sixteenth-century England, who required practical guidance in formal correspondence and rhetoric.\n\nThe manual proved to be exceptionally popular and influential, going through as many as ten editions by 1635. By providing accessible, vernacular templates for letter writing, Day's work shaped the communication standards of his era and became the most significant correspondence manual of its time. Despite his historical significance, Day's later life and the exact year of his death remain unrecorded.
