penser's magic kingdom is becoming ever more difficult. I
hope this edition provides a key.

THE TEXT OF THE POEM

No manuscript of _The Faerie Queene_ is known; we depend for our
text upon printed copies of the work.

The first of these appeared in 1590. It is a quarto edition,
published by William Ponsonby, and contains Books I-III. The
Registers of the Stationers' Company for 1589 include the
following entry:

_Primo Die Decembris.--Master Ponsonbye. Entered for his
Copye a book intituled the fayre Queene, dyposed into xii.
bookes &c. Aucthorysed vnder thandes of the Archb. of
Canterbury & bothe the Wardens, vjd._

The date of Spenser's letter to Raleigh is 23 January 1589 (1590
New Style); the book itself appeared some time after 25 March.
The text was indifferently proof-read, and a list of corrigenda
(Faults Escaped in the Print) accompanies it. Moreover, there is
variation between individual copies of the edition. Early copies
contain only ten dedicatory sonnets, while later ones contain the
full set of seventeen: for Spenser had made the signal blunder of
omitting Lord Burleigh from the illustrious company of
dedicatees. To confuse matters further, a few copies contain a
mixture of pages from the original and revised versions.

The quarto edition of 1596 was also published by Ponsonby, and
contains Books I-VI, variously bound into one or two volumes.
Books I-III were completely reset, apparently not from the MS.
but from a copy of 1590 heavily annotated by the author. Some,
but not all, of the corrections listed in the Faults Escaped were
incorporated in 1596. The end of Book III was changed,
continuing rather than ending the story of Scudamour and Amoret.
Spenser also added a new stanza at the beginning of Book I, Canto
xi, rewrote some single lines, and made sundry adjustments to
others. This process continued even as pages passed through the
press, so that there is variation from copy to copy, made more
complex by the mixing of sheets from different printings during
binding. No single copy of 1596 can therefore be said to be
definitive. 1596 does, however, have the advantage of Spenser's
personal supervision, and for this reason it is chosen as the
core of modern composite texts.

The third edition of _The Faerie Queene_ was published by Mathew
Lownes in 1609, ten years after Spenser's death. It is a folio
edition, and contains not only Books I-VI but also two c