Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was born around 1552 into a modest London family and studied at Cambridge, where he performed domestic services in exchange for his lodging and food. He spent most of his adult life in Ireland, as secretary to Lord Deputy Grey from 1580, then settled on lands confiscated from the Earl of Desmond, and defended brutal measures of repression in a treatise. His castle of Kilcolman was burned by the insurgents in 1598, during the Nine Years' War; he died in London in January 1599.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryThe Faerie QueeneEdmund Spenser · 1590LiteraturePublic domain