First published in 1595, the lyrical cycle of the outstanding English Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) “Amoretti and Epithalamus” occupies a special place in the history of Western European poetry of the Renaissance. Including a sonnet sequence, a group of “anacreontic” poems and a spectacular “Epithalam,” it not so much continues the main line of Petrarchist love lyrics as demonstrates the poet’s desire to distance himself from continental conventions. Dedicating these poems to his bride Elizabeth Boyle, Spencer emphasizes in the original form of the sonnets the fundamental novelty of the ideal of love he glorifies, sanctified by the bonds of church marriage, and for the first time in the history of the genre turns the Epithalamus into a monument in honor of his own wedding day. For a wide range of readers.