Introduction
Edmund Spenser
Born in or near 1552 to a family of small means, Edmund Spenser attended
the Merchant Taylor's School under Richard Mulcaster, and went to
Cambridge, about 1569-76, as a sizar of Pembroke Hall, where he befriended
Gabriel Harvey. He took his Bachelor's degree in 1573 and his Master's in
1576. By 1578 he was serving as secretary to Bishop John Young, in Kent,
the landscape of which is frequently mentioned in The Shepheardes
Calender. Entering into employment by the Earl of Leicester the following
year, Spenser became friends with Philip Sidney, Edward Dyer, and Fulke
Greville; they formed a literary group called by Spenser the "Areopagus,"
and their talents were enlisted in supporting the cause of the Leicester
faction in matters of religion and politics (Heninger xii-xiii). The
Shepheardes Calender appeared at the end of the year, in time to serve as,
among other things, propaganda for the Leicester position on the Queen's
proposed marriage with the Duc d'Alencon. The following year he began work
on The Faerie Queene, and entered the employ of Lord Grey of Wilton, Lord
Deputy of Ireland. In 1581 Spenser was appointed Clerk in Chancery for
Faculties, and soon after befriended Sir Walter Ralegh, whose estate was
not far from his own. The year 1589 saw Spenser's return to London, partly
to oversee the publication of the first three books of The Faerie
Queene.
Soon thereafter the Daphnaida and the Complaints also appeared. After
two years Spenser returned to Ireland, where he courted and married
Elizabeth Boyle, and continued to produce a number of works, including the
Amoretti and Epithalamion, Colin Clouts Come Home
Againe, Fowre
Hymnes, and Prothalamion. An edition of The Faerie
Queene, Books I-VI,
appeared in 1596. The Stationers Register carries an entry for A Vewe of
the present state of Irelande in April, 1598, but this did not appear
until 1633. A general uprising of the Irish forced Spenser to flee to
London in 1598, where he brought correspondence from Sir Thomas Norris to
the Privy Council; a few weeks later, January 13th, 1599, he died in
Westminster and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The Cantos of
Mutabilitie first appeared in the edition of The Faerie
Queene of 1609
(MacLean xv-xvi).
