SPENSER, Edmund.
£8,500 · Offered by Sokol Books
A fine copy of the first folio edition, with minor variants, of the Faerie Queen , the pre-eminent achievement of Edmund Spenser. Spenser was the first great poet in England since Chaucer, the most learned apart from Milton, the most influential 'poet s poet' as described by Lamb, and acknowledged by Shakespeare as the master of 'music and sweet poetry . His influence on subsequent literature cannot be exaggerated: Milton found him a sure guide both as a thinker and a poet; Dr Johnson pointed out the derivation of The Pilgrims Progress from the Faerie Queen ; Dryden called the author his Master in English . His epic poem The Faerie Queene , featuring the so-called Spenserian stanza for the first time, was a major influence in the writings of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb and many others. First published in two parts (1590, 1596), it includes here the Cantos of Mutabilitie , considered as an unfinished Book VII. It is an allegorical poem following the adventures of several knights, each representing a virtue (e.g., Britomart for chastity, Sir Guyon for temperance, the Redcrosse Knight for holiness), seeking to encourage gentlemen-readers towards virtue. It is also a not-so-veiled celebration, and occasionally critique, of Elizabeth I. The character of Braggadocio personified boasting had already entered the English language as 'a general term for any blustering blowhard as early as 1594, just four years after his appearance in print (Merriam-Webster). Spenser was known to his co
- Binding: Hardcover
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