Which British poet wrote the allegorical epic 'The Faerie Queene'?

Edmund Spenser wrote the allegorical epic The Faerie Queene. The poem is one of the major achievements of English Renaissance literature and is closely associated with the reign of Elizabeth I.

Spenser published the first three books in 1590 and three more in 1596. He originally planned twelve books, but the surviving poem is incomplete. Its narrative follows knights whose adventures explore virtues such as holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice, and courtesy.

The poem combines Arthurian legend, Christian allegory, English history, and influences from Italian epics by Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso. Spenser also created the Spenserian stanza, a nine-line form with a distinctive interlocking rhyme pattern and a final Alexandrine line.

A common mix-up is confusing Spenser with Geoffrey Chaucer, another important English poet. Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, while Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene. William Shakespeare and John Milton were also later contemporaries or successors, not its authors.