Edmund Spenser’s sonnet sequence
Amorettiwas first printed, together with the poet’s marriage hymn
Epithalamion, in a single octavo in 1595. It had been entered into the Stationers’ Register on 19th November 1594 and was published by William Ponsonby, who in the dedicatory letter addressed to Sir Robert Needham that was printed with the work, appears to suggest that it was Needham who brought Spenser’s manuscript to London from Ireland. As Ponsonby writes, Needham is to be praised not only for his literary tastes, but for providing the poems with safe passage across the Irish Sea:
For, besides your iudgement and delighte in learned poesie: This gentle Muse for her former perfection long wished for in Englande, nowe at the length crossing the Seas in your happy companye, (though to
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Citation: Badcoe, Tamsin Theresa. "Amoretti". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 April 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6719, accessed 03 December 2024.]