Edmund Spenser: a life Andrew Hadfield (Oxford University Press, £25) ISBN 9780199591022 Londoner Edmund Spenser (1552–99) was already writing poetry by the time he went up to Cambridge as a poor scholar. His first major work, the Shepheardes Calender, was published in 1579 and quickly became famous for its wordplay, being full of archaic usages, ... Read more
