Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599)
Poet, was born in East Smithfield, London.
While still at school he had contributed 14 sonnet-visions to Van der Noot's Theatre for Worldlings (1569). The next year, 1579, saw the publication of The Shepheard's Calendar in 12 eclogues. The following year Spenser was appointed secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, Deputy for Ireland, a strict Puritan, and accompanied him to Ireland. In 1581 he was appointed Registrar of Chancery, and received a grant of the Abbey and Castle of Enniscorthy.
Simultaneously, however, a heavy blow fell upon him in the death of Sidney at the Battle of Zutphen. The loss of this dear friend he commemorated in his lament of Astrophel. In 1590 he was visited by Sir Walter Raleigh, who persuaded him to come to England, and presented him to the Queen, from whom he received a pension. In the same year his reputation as a poet was vastly augmented by the publication of the first three books of the Faerie Queen, dedicated to Elizabeth. The enthusiasm with which they were received led the publisher to bring out a collection of other writings of Spenser under the general title of Complaints.
Having seen these ventures launched, Spenser returned to Kilcolman and wrote Colin Clout's come Home Again, one of the brightest and most vigorous of his poems, not, however, published until 1595. In the following year appeared his Four Hymns, two on Love and Beauty and two on Heavenly Love and Beauty, and the Prothalamion, on the marriage of two daughters of the Earl of Worcester.
In 1594 he was married to Elizabeth Boyle, whom he had courted in Amoretti, and his union with whom he now celebrated in the magnificent Epithalamion, by many regarded as his most perfect poem. In 1595 he returned to England, taking with him the second part of the Faerie Queen, published in 1596. In 1598 he was made Sheriff of Cork, and in the same year his fortunes suffered a final eclipse.
The rebellion of Tyrone broke out, his castle was burned, and in the conflagration his youngest child, an infant, perished, he himself with his wife and remaining children escaping with difficulty. He joined the President, Sir T. Norris, who sent him with despatches to London, where he suddenly died on January 16, 1599, as was long believed in extreme destitution. This, however, happily appears to be at least doubtful. He was buried in Westminster Abbey near Chaucer.
From Biographical Dictionary of English Literature - the Everyman Edition of 1910

links:  -  Edmund Spenser home page  -  Edmund Spenser at the University of Cambridge (G.B.)  - The Spenser Society