Author

Edmund Spenser wrote The Fairie Queene in multiple parts through several years. Edmund’s birth and parentage is unclear with only speculation about either.   History does record that he attended Pembroke College and graduated with a Bachelors degree or the equivalent in 1573 and a Masters degree in 1576.  While at college, he befriended several young men who would later help him in the court and with patronages.  One of the young men he met was John Young, the future Bishop of Rochester who employed Spenser as a secretary after they finished college. 

While working, Edmund spent time writing poems and letters.  His play, The Sheapherdes Calendar was published in 1579 after he worked for both, the Bishop of Rochester and the Earl of Leicester, Sir Robert Dudley, whom he had met while attending Pembroke.  Eventually Edmund was appointed as secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland and moved to Dublin where he quickly started moving up the political chain.  By 1589 he was living on a manor and met Sir Walter Raleigh who enjoyed what he read of The Fairie Queene and encouraged Spenser to publish it.  They traveled to London together and in 1590, William Ponsonby published The Fairie Queene. 

Edmund Spenser married an Irish woman, Elizabeth Boyle, on 11 June 1594 but he died only 5 years later in 1599.