The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser

Rating:
Summary: The definitive version for the serious academic student
Review: If you are in any way responsible academically for Spenser's shorter works, this is the book. Editing, of course, refers to how the text of the poems is managed with regard to conflicts in early editions, etc. Here, decisions on text are made consistently and all changes vs. early texts are listed in the Appendices. Also useful, even though it's now more than 12 years out of date, is the annotated bibliography, which provides a good starting point for additional literary research.

Rating:
Summary: marred by overediting
Review: This book would normally get a "10" for providing us with the shorter poems of Edmund Spenser, but it is marred by overediting. The collective ego of Yale comes through on almost every page. I can see one footnote that begins, "There is irony here." I ask, is there any poem without irony? Why point it out? A footnote should be providing the student with factual information, references to allusions, etc., and not providing interpretation. So, buy the book; Spenser is so great a poet that philosophy textbooks sometimes devote pages to him; but ignore the editing.