Edmund Spenser Bio for college literature class

Edmund Spencer biography

1. Edmund Spenser’s Biography
-Born in London in 1552 or 1553 into ‘humble origins.’ Mother, wife, and Queen all named
“Elizabeth”; his father (probable) was John Spenser, a clothmaker
-Went to London’s “Merchant Taylor School” thanks to a sum of money left by London
citizen Robert Nowell.
-Spenser received his bachelor’s from Cambridge in 1572, and his Master’s in 1576, all the
while working as a “sizar” in Pembroke Hall, essentially, the guy who cleans up after the
rich kids. He, in short, worked his way through Cambridge, no doubt singled out from the
more affluent sons of the nobility. While there, Spenser meets the literary enthusiast
Gabriel Harvey, a man whose correspondences with Spenser reveal great education and a
great supporter of Spenser (Harvey pushes Spenser to publish The Shepherdes Calender in
1579, a pastoral work modeled on Virgil and Theocritus, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney). A
year earlier (1578), Harvey had introduced Spenser to Sir Philip Sidney, and helped him to
secure a place in the service of the Earl of Leicester.

2. -Spenser is appointed Sheriff of Cork (Ireland) in 1597, and secretary to the Lord Grey, Deputy
of Ireland in 1580. Took part in Grey’s ill-fated attempted “pacification” of “Desmond’s
Rebellion.” Spenser’s own views of the best way to ‘pacify’ the Irish is expressed in his 1596-8
work A View of the State of Ireland: a scorched-earth policy (a work not published until 1633).
-Books I-III of The Faerie Queene were published in 1590, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I.
Spenser had no doubt been working on this Romance Epic as far back as the mid-1580s.
-1591: The Complaints are published, containing earlier works such as Petrarch’s Visions,
Virgil’s Gnat, The Ruins of Rome, and Mother Hubberds Tale.
-1595: Amoretti with Epithalamion published.
-1596: Books IV-VI of The Faerie Queene (with The Mutabilitie Cantos”) published; Spenser
envisioned this work as a twelve book nationalistic/ moralistic epic poem in the style of
Arisosto’s Orlando Furioso and Tasso’s Jerusalem Liberated.
-1597: The Earl of Tyrone rebels in Ireland; Spenser’s home, Kilcolman Castle, is sacked
and burned to the ground. Spenser dies in 1599 in Westminster, his fortunes ruined, having
never obtained the full royal patronage he felt he deserved. He is buried in Poets’ Corner in
Westminster Abbey, and it is said that at his funeral, respected poets of the time threw quills
and verses into the tomb before it was sealed out of respect for the loss of England’s “second
Chaucer,” another of Spenser’s poetic models.