Edmund Spenser (1553-1599) was the leading non-dramatic poet of the Elizabethan age. Born in London and educated at Cambridge, Spenser spent most of his adult life as an official in the English administration of Ireland. There he wrote his magnificent epic romance The Faerie Queene. Earlier, his poem The Shepheardes Calendar had presented religious and social satire through innovative poetic forms. Spenser's shorter poetic works, including his Sonnets, Complaints, and Epithalamion, mark him as one of the greatest lyric poets in the English language. His prose treatise on the Anglo-Irish conflict, the View of the Present State of Ireland, is remarkable for its incisive analysis and brutal policy recommendations, and remains controversial to this day.