The Faerie Queene, Bk I and Canto I-VII of Bk II
Title
The Faerie Queene, Bk I and Canto I-VII of Bk II
Text Read
The Faerie Queene, Bk I and Canto I-VII of Bk II
Author
Spenser, Edmund
Original Source
London: Pickering, 1839. The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Vol. I.
Digitized by
Internet Archive
Publication Date
1839
Date(s) of Reading
- 1840-08-12
- 1869-01-23
Evidence
1840-08-12: George Eliot to Maria Lewis, 12 August 1840. "I have received "The Faerie Queen," and am trebly pleased with it, first for its clear type, next for its cheapness, and last, not least, for the tacit witness it gives to your anxiety to gratify my little wishes in the midst of your own far weightier anxieties. I am able to destroy your claims to vaticination by telling you that I am so well as to find both rest and labour sweet, and that I would pass several days of languor to behold some of those guileless wearers of purple and scarlet, which the Germans call summer birds, but which have not justified that name in our country lately. I mean, moths and butterflies, yea and dragon flies. I have since last I wrote to you, been blessed with an unusual placidity of mind, partly perhaps attributable, though I hope in a slight degree, to those physical sensations by which a beneficent Creator shews kindness even to the unthankful and the evil; chiefly I trust I may assign my feelings to the far more precious rills of mercy that flow to the willing soul not only through the appointed channels which we are commanded diligently to keep open, but by an infinity of passages too narrow for the natural eye to discern." GEL 1: 62-3
1869-01-23: "Since I wrote last I have finished a little poem on Old Agatha. But the last week or two I have been so disturbed in health that no work prospers. I have made a little way in constructing my new Tale, have been reading a little on philology, have finished the 24th book of the Iliad, the first book of the Faery Queene, Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things in Mrs Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Volpone, and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading - besides the first four cantos of Don Juan. But the last two or three days I have seemed to live under a leaden pressure - all movement mental or bodily is grievous to me. In the evening read aloud Bright's 4th speech on India, and a story in Italian. In the Spectator some interesting facts about loss of memory, and "double life". In the Revue des Cours a lecture by Sir W. Thomson of Edinburgh on the retardation of the earth's motion round its axis." Diary 1861-1877 134
1869-01-23: "Since I wrote last I have finished a little poem on Old Agatha. But the last week or two I have been so disturbed in health that no work prospers. I have made a little way in constructing my new Tale, have been reading a little on philology, have finished the 24th book of the Iliad, the first book of the Faery Queene, Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things in Mrs Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Volpone, and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading - besides the first four cantos of Don Juan. But the last two or three days I have seemed to live under a leaden pressure - all movement mental or bodily is grievous to me. In the evening read aloud Bright's 4th speech on India, and a story in Italian. In the Spectator some interesting facts about loss of memory, and "double life". In the Revue des Cours a lecture by Sir W. Thomson of Edinburgh on the retardation of the earth's motion round its axis." Diary 1861-1877 134
Citation
Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene, Bk I and Canto I-VII of Bk II, George Eliot's Reading, George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/57131