biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (?1552–99)
|
| biography:
| Poet, born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge, and obtained a place in Leicester's household, which led to a friendship with Sir Philip Sidney and a circle of wits (the Areopagus). His first original work was a sequence of pastoral poems, The Shepheards Calendar (1579), which heralded the English literary Golden Age. In 1580 he became secretary to the lord deputy in Ireland, and for his services was given Kilcolman Castle, Co Cork, where he settled in 1586. Here he began his major work, The Faerie Queene, using a nine-line verse pattern which later came to be called the Spenserian stanza. The first three books, dedicated to Elizabeth I (the fairy queen, Gloriana), were published in 1590, and the second three in 1596, but the poem was left unfinished at his death. |
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