1522 – Edmund Spenser Poet, born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge, and obtained a place in Leicester’s household, which led to a friendship with Sir Philip Sidney and a circle of wits (the Areopagus). He was an English poet and Poet Laureate.
1579 – His first original work was a sequence of pastoral poems, The Shepheards Calendar, which heralded the English literary Golden Age.
1580 – He became secretary to the lord deputy in Ireland.
1586 – His services was given Kilcolman Castle, Co Cork, where he settled.
1590 – He began his major work, The Faerie Queene, using a nine-line verse pattern which later came to be called the Spenserian stanza. The first three books, dedicated to Elizabeth I (the fairy queen, Gloriana), were published.
1596 – The second three of the Fairie Queen was published, but the poem was left unfinished at his death.
1597 – He was appointed sheriff of Cork.
1599 – On the 16th of January, he died at Westminster, ruined in fortune, if not heart-broken, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, near his master Chaucer.