Edmund Spenser (about 1552–1599) was an English poet, the author of The Faerie Queene, an allegorical epic in honour of Elizabeth I. He invented the nine-line Spenserian stanza and was called by later poets 'the poets' poet'.
London and Cambridge
Edmund Spenser was born in London around 1552 and studied at the Merchant Taylors' School and at Pembroke College, Cambridge, as a poor scholar. There he became friends with the scholar Gabriel Harvey.
His first major work, The Shepheardes Calender (1579), a series of twelve pastoral poems, one for each month, announced a new poet.
Ireland
In 1580 Spenser went to Ireland as secretary to the Lord Deputy, Lord Grey, and spent most of the rest of his life there, acquiring Kilcolman Castle in County Cork. His prose dialogue A View of the Present State of Ireland defended harsh English policies.
His neighbour Walter Raleigh brought him to London in 1589 to present the first books of The Faerie Queene to the queen, who granted him a pension.
The Faerie Queene
The first three books appeared in 1590 and three more in 1596, out of the twelve planned. Each follows a knight embodying a virtue, such as holiness, temperance or chastity, in the service of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, an image of Elizabeth.
In 1598 Kilcolman was burned during the Irish rebellion and Spenser fled to London, where he died on 13 January 1599. He was buried in Westminster Abbey near Chaucer; poets are said to have thrown elegies and pens into his grave.
Anecdotes
Amoretti
Spenser's sonnet sequence Amoretti and his wedding poem Epithalamion (1595) celebrate his courtship and marriage to Elizabeth Boyle in 1594.
Poets' Corner
Spenser's burial near Chaucer helped create Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. In 1938 his grave was opened in the hope of finding the poems thrown into it, but none was found.
Frequently asked questions
What is The Faerie Queene?
A long allegorical poem in six books (of twelve planned), in which knights representing virtues serve Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, a figure of Elizabeth I.
What is the Spenserian stanza?
A stanza of eight lines of ten syllables and a ninth of twelve syllables, rhyming ababbcbcc. Byron, Keats and Shelley used it.
Where did Spenser live?
Mostly in Ireland, at Kilcolman Castle in County Cork, from the 1580s until 1598.