SOURCE: Quitslund, Jon A. “Questionable Evidence in the Letters of 1580 between Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser.” In Spenser's Life and the Subject of Biography, edited by Judith H. Anderson, Donald Cheney, and David A. Richardson, pp. 81-98. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Quitslund examines the five letters between Spenser and Harvey that were published in 1580 and questions the trustworthiness of these documents as evidence about Spenser's personal life.

Scholars interested in the private life of Spenser, in the public career that was the context for his pursuit of fame, and in the friendships and other dealings with people that help us to understand who Spenser was and what he thought at various points in his life, have few documents to work with. Under these circumstances, it is understandable that much has been made of the information contained in the exchange of letters between the...