Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser, (c. 1552-99). English poet. He held various government posts in Ireland and bought an estate near Cork, where he wrote The Faerie Queene (1589-1609), an allegorical poem praising the Christian virtues. The poem was published with the aid of Spenser’s friend, Sir Walter Raleigh. Spenser planned the work in 12 volumes but only six were published. Later volumes may have been lost in the rebellion that destroyed Spenser’s Irish estates and forced him to flee to Cork with his wife and four children. He subsequently returned to London, where he died suddenly in 1599.
“One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades the whole of the (aerie Queene. We become sick of cardinal virtues and deadly sins, and long for the society of plain men and women. Of the persons who read the first canto one in ten reaches the end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end of the poem. T. B. Macaulay, Edinburgh Review December 1831”
