Edmund Spenser
English poet, author of The Faerie Queene
English School / Unidentified painter · via Wikipedia: Edmund Spenser · Public domain
He is considered one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse and a great poet in the English language.[1] The poet who wrote The Faerie Queene, an epic work dedicated to Elizabeth I, was Edmund Spenser.[2]
Quick Facts
- Birthplace
- London, England
- Died
- 13 January 1599
- Resting place
- Westminster Abbey
- Pen name
- Immerito (in 1579)
- Occupation
- Poet, state servant
- Language
- Early Modern English
- Education
- Pembroke College, Cambridge (M.A.)
- Subjects
- Love
- beauty
- beautiful lady
- pastoral
Facts from the source article.
Life and work
He served as secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester in 1578, and later went to Ireland in 1580 in service of Lord Deputy Arthur Grey.[3][4] After his first wife died, he married Elizabeth Boyle in 1594 and addressed the sonnet sequence Amoretti to her.[5] Rebels burnt down his house in Ireland in 1598, and he died in London the following year.[2][6] Around 1552, in East Smithfield, London, Edmund Spenser came into the world, though the precise day of his birth remains unknown.[7]
His schooling took place at Merchant Taylors' School, after which he entered Pembroke College, Cambridge, as a sizar.[7] The Shepheardes Calender, his initial significant publication, came out in 1579; around that same period he wed Machabyas Childe.[3][8] The initial trio of books for The Faerie Queene were released in 1590, and from the Queen he secured an annual life pension of £50.[9] A prose work titled A View of the Present State of Irelande, composed in 1596, called for the eradication of the native language and traditions of Ireland.[10]
What the cited sources add
The Westminster Abbey account notes that Anne Clifford put up Spenser's memorial in 1620, but it fell into decay and was replaced by an exact copy in 1778.[2] William Camden's 1600 guide records that Spenser's mother's name was Elizabeth and that he married Maccabaeus Childe at St Margaret's Westminster on 27 October 1579.[2] A 1938 search for Spenser's exact burial site found nothing that could be positively identified as his grave.[2] The Poetry Foundation defines the Spenserian stanza as eight iambic-pentameter lines and a final alexandrine with a rhyme scheme of ABABBCBCC.[11]
References
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Spenser" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "National Archive documents"; Hadfield, "The death of Edmund Spenser", OUPblog, 13 January 2013 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "Edmund Spenser", Westminster Abbey. facts only, no text reused. westminster-abbey.org
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Spenser" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hadfield, Andrew. Edmund Spenser: A Life. Oxford University Press. 2012, p. 110.; Hadfield pp. 128, 140; "Edmund Spenser", Westminster Abbey (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Spenser" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Church, "Spenser", 1879, p. 56–58, 93 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Spenser" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hadfield, pp. 296, 301, 323; "Edmund Spenser", Westminster Abbey (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Spenser" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hadfield pp. 391–393; Beeson, "Westminster Abbey", FISA, Barcelona, Spain, 1983, p. 53 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Spenser" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; "The Edmund Spenser Home Page: Biography", English.cam.ac.uk (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Spenser" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Merritt Yerkes Hughes, "Virgil and Spenser", in University of California Publications in English, vol. 2, no. 3. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1929 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Spenser" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hadfield, p. 165 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Spenser" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hadfield, pp. 334–43, 365 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "Spenserian stanza at Poetry Foundation.", 2 January 2023. facts only, no text reused. poetryfoundation.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Edmund Spenser (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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