Who is Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser (; 1552/1553 – 13 January 1599) 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 is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English language.

Life

Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, around the year 1552; however, there is still some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. His parenthood is obscure, but he was probably the son of John Spenser, a journeyman clothmaker. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabrie...
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Edmund Spenser Poems

• Sonnet I*
  To the right worshipfull, my singular good frend, M. Gabriell Harvey, Doctor of the Lawes.
  
  Harvey, the happy above happiest men
  I read**; that, sitting like a looker-on ...
• Sonnet Ii*
  Whoso wil seeke, by right deserts, t'attaine
  Unto the type of true nobility,
  And not by painted shewes, and titles vaine,
  Derived farre from famous auncestrie, ...
• The Visions Of Petrarch:
  FORMERLY TRANSLATED.
  [Footnote: The first six of these sonnets are translated (not directly, but through the French of Clement Marot) from Petrarch's third Canzone in Morte di Laura. The seventh is by the translator. The circumstance that the version is made from Marot renders it probable that these sonnets are really by Spenser. C.]
  
  ...
• Visions Of The Worlds Vanitie
  I.
  
  One day, whiles that my daylie cares did sleepe,
  My spirit, shaking off her earthly prison, ...
• Epigrams
  I*.
  [* In the folio of 1611, these four short pieces are appended to the Sonnets. The second and third are translated from Marot's Epigrams, Liv. III. No. 5, De Diane, and No. 24, De Cupido et de sa Dame. C.]
  
  In youth, before I waxed old, ...

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Edmund Spenser Quotes

• Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, ease after war, death after life does greatly please.
• A stern discipline pervades all nature, which is a little cruel that it may be very kind.
• What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty.
• It is the mind that maketh good or ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

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Comments about Edmund Spenser

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