Edmund Spenser

Abstract

Spenser was born in London, and in 1561 entered Merchant Taylors’ School, where his fellow pupils included Lancelot Andrewes, Thomas Kyd and Thomas Lodge. While still at school he published translations of Petrarch (from Marot’s French version) and Du Bellay. He studied at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and in 1579 entered the household of the Earl of Leicester, where he became a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated The Shepherd’s Calender; in the same year he began to write The Fairy Queen. In 1580 Spenser moved to Ireland, initially as private secretary to Lord Grey, the Lord Deputy of Ireland. After Grey’s departure Spenser remained in government service in various parts of Ireland. In 1588 he bought Kilcolman (a large estate in County Cork), where he established a small English colony and became a friend of his neighbour Sir Walter Ralegh. Books I to III of The Fairy Queen were published in 1590, and books IV to VI were added in 1596. In 1594 Spenser married Elizabeth Boyle; their courtship is celebrated in the Amoretti sonnets, and their wedding in Epithalamion. Two years later Spenser, the most humane of poets, published the distinctly inhumane View of the Present State of Ireland, a prose treatise in which Spenser defends the atrocities of Lord Grey; the tract is deeply rooted in English contempt for the Irish people.