Edmund Spenser is most famous for his extremely long and arduous allegorical poem, The Faerie Queen. Philip Larkin, who was obliged to study that monumental tome of Elizabethan literature while at Oxford, famously commented, “First I thought that Troilus and Criseyde was the most boring poem in English. Then I thought Beowulf was. Then I thought Paradise Lost was. Now I know that The Faerie Queene is the dullest thing out.” As you might guess, it is not a work read widely by casual lovers of verse. But Spenser’s other great contribution to the art of English poetry, his romantic and religious sonnet cycle, Amoretti, has been regretfully overshadowed by the fame of The Faerie Queen.