c. 1552-1599 · English poet and colonial official, author of The Faerie Queene
About Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-1599) was born in London and educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. His pastoral sequence The Shepheardes Calender (1579) made his name; from 1580 he served the English administration in Ireland, first as secretary to Lord Grey, and wrote most of The Faerie Queene at Kilcolman in County Cork. He died in London in 1599 and was buried in Westminster Abbey near Chaucer.
“Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease, And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave? Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.”
Book I of The Faerie Queene, the Legend of the Knight of the Red Cross, or of Holiness, tells how a young, untried knight wins his spurs by freeing a kingdom from a dragon and, on the way, learns how easily a Christian soul is deceived. Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, has sent the Redcrosse Knight, who bears a bloody cross on breast and shield, to help the lady Una, whose royal parents are besieged in their brazen castle by a monstrous dragon.