Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender (1579)

Spensers extraordinary Shepheardes Calender as first printed in 1579 is arguably the seminal book of the Elizabethan literary renaissance. This volume reassesses it as a material text in relation to book history, and provides the first clearly detailed facsimile of the 1579 Calender available as a book. The editor reconsiders the original books development, production, design, and particular characteristics, and demonstrates both its correlations with diverse precursors in print and its significant departures. Numerous illustrations of archival sources facilitate comparison. By reinvestigating the 1579 Calenders twelve pictures, he shows that Spenser himself probably designed them, that they involve complex symbolism, and that this books meaning is thus profoundly verbal-visual. An analyzed facsimile is an essential new resource for study of Spensers Calender, Spenser, Elizabethan print and poetics, and early modern English literary history. -- .