Gary Waller surveys Spenser's career in terms of the material conditions of its production - the often overlooked material factors of race, gender, class, agency - and the resonant 'places' which influenced his career - court, church, nation, colony. The book includes an original account of the gender politics of Spenser's work and his difficult position between Ireland and England, the 'homes' about which he held ambivalent feelings. Waller also discusses the 'place' the biographer occupies in writing a literary life.

GARY WALLER

Preface - The Construction of a Literary Life - The Poet's Three Worlds - The Making of a Protestant Poet - 'Consorted in one Harmonee': The Faerie Queene, 1590: Books One to Three - A 'world ... runne quite out of square': The Faerie Queene, 1596: Books Four to Six - Mutability and the Literary Life - Envoi - Notes - Select Bibliography - Index