# Is "The Faerie Queene" by Edmund Spenser a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser ([John Wolfe] for William Ponsonby, London, 1590) is identified by: Quarto, London 1590, Books I–III, printed by John Wolfe for William Ponsonby (the printer is not named on the title; the woodcut device and St George and Dragon woodcut appear, with the dedication to Queen Elizabeth on the title verso). There is no single first edition of the whole poem.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Quarto, London 1590, Books I–III, printed by John Wolfe for William Ponsonby (the printer is not named on the title; the woodcut device and St George and Dragon woodcut appear, with the dedication to Queen Elizabeth on the title verso)
- The recorded first-part points are mechanical and checkable: the title's date line is widely spaced, with the first digit of 1590 falling under the 'r' of 'for' in the imprint; p
- 309 is misnumbered 319; the Welsh and English words in lines 4–5 of p
- 332 are left unprinted with blank spaces reserved for them; pp
- 486–87 are numbered correctly; the '3' of p
- 403 is printed backwards
- Publisher imprint reads [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonby, London

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Edmund Spenser |
| Publisher | [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonby, London |
| Year | 1590 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Quarto, London 1590, Books I–III, printed by John Wolfe for William Ponsonby (the printer is not named on the title; the woodcut device and… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Quarto, London 1590, Books I–III, printed by John Wolfe for William Ponsonby (the printer is not named on the title; the woodcut device and St George and Dragon woodcut appear, with the dedication to Queen Elizabeth on the title verso). The recorded first-part points are mechanical and checkable: the title's date line is widely spaced, with the first digit of 1590 falling under the 'r' of 'for' in the imprint; p. 309 is misnumbered 319; the Welsh and English words in lines 4–5 of p. 332 are left unprinted with blank spaces reserved for them; pp. 486–87 are numbered correctly; the '3' of p. 403 is printed backwards. The terminal matter carries the real state distinction: in the earlier state, Pp1r–Pp8r prints Spenser's Letter to Ralegh, the commendatory verses and only ten dedicatory sonnets; in the revised state, leaves Pp6–8 are rejected and quire Qq1–4 follows Pp8 with the expanded set of seventeen sonnets (Lord Burghley having been omitted from the first set), errata on the verso. Mixed copies made up from both states occur and are documented. Books IV–VI (1596, printed by Richard Field for William Ponsonby) carry the Pforzheimer misnumberings plus p. 269 misnumbered 271. References: STC 23081 (1590) and 23082 (1596); Pforzheimer 969 and 970; ESTC S117748. Identification points only; no valuation.

## Is this the true first?
There is no single first edition of the whole poem. The 1590 Ponsonby quarto is the true first of Books I–III; the 1596 Ponsonby quarto (The Second Part of the Faerie Queene) is the true first of Books IV–VI, and a complete first-edition set is the two together. Note the trap inside the 1596: it reprints Books I–III, so those books in a 1596 set are a second edition, and their text is revised — Spenser cancelled the 1590 close of Book III (the Amoret and Scudamour hermaphrodite reunion) and substituted the non-ending that carries into Book IV, so the 1590 quarto is the only source for the original ending. The 1609 folio, printed by Humphrey Lownes for Matthew Lownes, is the first folio and the first posthumous/collected edition, and is the first appearance in print of the Two Cantos of Mutabilitie — a genuine first for that text, but for the poem it is a later edition and should be described as first folio / first thus, not as the first edition. No original-language or foreign precedence question arises: the poem is English throughout.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue exists for a 1590 quarto. The realistic confusions are the 1596 quarto (second edition of Books I–III), the 1609 and 1611/1612–13 Lownes folios, the many 18th- and 19th-century editions (Hughes 1715, Todd 1805, the Victorian illustrated sets), and modern facsimiles and scholarly editions. Because the poem was reprinted continuously, the safest screen is the imprint and date: only a 1590 Ponsonby quarto with the date-under-'r' imprint and the Pp/Qq sonnet state can be the first of Books I–III, and only a 1596 Ponsonby quarto can be the first of Books IV–VI.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Faerie Queene* by Edmund Spenser a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-faerie-queene
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.