{"product_id":"spenser-edmund-3","title":"SPENSER, Edmund.","description":"\u003cp\u003eA 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 .   \u003cbr\u003e\n 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). \u003cbr\u003e\n  Spenser was known to his contemporaries as  the prince of poets , as great in English as Virgil in Latin. He left behind him masterful essays in every genre of poetry, from pastoral and elegy to epithalamion and epic. [...] Milton was later to claim Spenser as  a better teacher than Aquinas , and generations of readers, students, and scholars have admired him for his subtle use of language, his unbounded imagination, his immense classical and religious learning, his keen understanding of moral and political philosophy, and his unerring ability to synthesize and, ultimately, to delight' (Cambridge University,  The Edmund Spenser biography ).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SPENSER, Edmund.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868711821647,"sku":"L4547","price":8500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/20250614_184416-copy-1.jpg?v=1781793399","url":"https:\/\/www.sokol.co.uk\/products\/spenser-edmund-3","provider":"Sokol Books Ltd","version":"1.0","type":"link"}