Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was born in London around 1552 and was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. His first major work, The Shepheardes Calender (1579), a series of twelve pastoral poems, one for each month, established him as a leading new poet. In 1580 he went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey, the lord deputy, and he spent most of the rest of his life there as an official and landholder, eventually at Kilcolman Castle in County Cork. There he befriended Sir Walter Raleigh, who encouraged him to publish The Faerie Queene. The first three books appeared in 1590 and three more in 1596. The poem, written in a nine-line stanza he invented, now called the Spenserian stanza, is an allegory in which knights such as the Redcrosse Knight represent virtues like holiness and justice, and it praises Queen Elizabeth I as Gloriana. In 1598 his estate was burned during an Irish rebellion. He died in London in 1599 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Edmund Spenser is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: An Anglican and devoted Protestant who opposed the Catholic Church. Source: Wikipedia