Edmund Spenser (1552–1599)

Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English language. 

Life 

Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London around the year 1552 though there is some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabriel Harvey, and later consulted him, despite their differing views on poetry. 

The Faerie Queene 

Spenser's masterpiece is an extensive poem The Faerie Queene. The first three books of The Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and a second set of three books were published in 1596. This extended epic poem deals with the adventures of knights, dragons, ladies in distress, etc. yet it is also an extended allegory about the moral life and what makes for a life of virtue. Spenser originally indicated that he intended the poem to be twelve books long, hence there is some argument about whether the version we have is in any real sense complete. 
Structure of the Spenserian Stanza and Sonnet 
Spenser used a distinctive verse form, called the Spenserian stanza, in several works, including The Faerie Queene. The stanza's main meter is iambic pentameter with a final line in iambic hexameter (having six feet or stresses, known as an Alexandrine), and the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. 

The Spenserian Sonnet is based on a fusion of elements of both the Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet. It is similar to the Shakespearan sonnet in the sense that its set up is based more on the 3 quatrains and a couplet,a system set up by Shakespeare; however it is more like the Petrarchan tradition in the fact that the conclusion follows from the argument or issue set up in the earlier quatrains. 

Edmund Spenser's Works:

Works 

Iambicum Trimetrum 
1569: Jan van der Noodt's A theatre for Worldlings 
1579: The Shepheardes Calender, published under the pseudonym "Immerito" 
1590: The Faerie Queene, Books 1–3 
1591: Complaints Containing sundrie small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie 
1592: Axiochus, a translation of a pseudo-Platonic dialogue from the original Ancient Greek 
Daphnaïda. An Elegy upon the death of the noble and vertuous Douglas Howard, Daughter and heire of Henry Lord Howard, Viscount Byndon, and wife of Arthure Gorges Esquier 

1595:Amoretti and Epithalamion, containing: 

Astrophel. A Pastorall Elegie vpon the death of the most Noble and valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney. 
Colin Clouts Come home againe 
1596: Fowre Hymnes dedicated from the court at Greenwich; published with the second edition of Daphnaida 
Prothalamion 
The Faerie Queene, Books 4–6 

Posthumous 

1609: Two Cantos of Mutabilitie published together with a reprint of The Fairie Queene 
1611: First folio edition of Spenser's collected works 
1633: A vewe of the present state of Irelande a prose treatise on the reformation of Ireland, first published in James Ware's Ancient Irish Chronicles

Edmund Spenser's "Amoretti," Sonnet #75