Although Edmund Spenser was born in
London and educated in England, he
spent most of his life in Ireland. It was
there that he wrote one of the greatest
epic romances in English literature,
The Faerie Queene. The poem tells the
stories of six knights, each representing
a particular moral virtue. Spenser was
innovative in devising a new verse form,
in mixing features of the Italian romance
and the classical epic, and in using
archaic English words.
Move to Ireland In 1576, Spenser earned
a master’s degree from Pembroke College
at Cambridge University. Three years
later, he published his first important
work of poetry, The Shepheardes Calender,
which was immediately popular. It
consisted of 12 pastoral poems, one for
each month of the year. In 1580, Spenser
became secretary to the lord deputy of
Ireland, who was charged with defending
English settlers from native Irish opposed
to England’s colonization of Ireland.
Spenser wrote the
rest of his major
poetry in Ireland, and that country’s
landscape and people greatly
influenced
his writing.
Spenser held various civil
service posts during his years in
Ireland. In 1589, he was granted
a large estate surrounding
Kilcolman Castle, which had
been taken from an Irish rebel. Spenser’s
friend Sir Walter Raleigh owned a
neighboring estate.
Second Marriage Spenser’s courtship of
his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, inspired
him to write a sonnet sequence (a series
of related sonnets) called Amoretti, which
means “little love poems.” The details
and emotions presented in the sonnets
are thought to be partly autobiographical.
“Sonnet 30” and “Sonnet 75” are part
of this sonnet sequence. To celebrate his
marriage to Boyle in 1594, Spenser wrote
the lyric poem Epithalamion.
In 1598, just four years after Spenser’s
marriage, Irish rebels overran his
estate and burned his home. Spenser
and his family had to flee through an
underground tunnel. They escaped to
Cork, and a few months...