Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse, and he is considered one of the great poets in the English language.
Edmund Spenser
Title page, Fowre Hymnes, by Edmund Spenser, published by William Ponsonby, London, 1596
Title Page of a 1617 Edition of The Shepheardes Calender printed by Matthew Lownes, often bound with the complete works printed in 1611 or 1617.
The epic poem The Faerie Queene frontispiece, printed by William Ponsonby in 1590.
The Faerie Queene is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books I–III were first published in 1590, then republished in 1596 together with books IV–VI. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: at over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 stanzas, it is one of the longest poems in the English language; it is also the work in which Spenser invented the verse form known as the Spenserian stanza. On a literal level, the poem follows several knights as a means to examine different virtues, and though the text is primarily an allegorical work, it can be read on several levels of allegory, including as praise of Queen Elizabeth I. In Spenser's "Letter of the Authors", he states that the entire epic poem is "cloudily enwrapped in Allegorical devices", and that the aim of publishing The Faerie Queene was to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline".
Title page of The Faerie Queene, c. 1590
Holiness defeats Error: an illustration from Book I, Part l of an 1895–1897 edition
Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret by William Etty, 1833. Tate Britain, London.
Britomart viewing Artegall by Walter Crane from Book III, Part VII of an 1895–1897 edition