The third of four prefatory materials to The Shepheardes Calender, the dedicatory Epistle to Gabriel Harvey is an important document in English letters. Above all, it boldly introduces the author of the pastoral book as the ‘new Poete’ (dedication title)---a phrase that continues to be associated with Spenser over 400 years later.

The Epistle divides into several topics: the New Poet’s relation with Chaucer and Virgil and a prediction of the author’s fame (1-14); his groundbreaking use of language--both his individual words (23-95) and his sentence arrangement (96-111)--to advance the ‘Mother tonge’ (70), including his triumphant overgoing of ‘the rakehellye route of our ragged rymers’ (102-3); the program of an author who begins the ‘flyght’ (123) of his career with pastoral, in imitation of Virgil and other poets (112-36); the poet’s ‘purpose’ (137) in writing SC (137-61), ‘to mitigate and allay the heate of his passion, or else to warne . . . young shepheards . . . of his unfortunate folly’ (140-2); and the evocation of a literary environment in which the book is produced, including its relation to Harvey, Philip Sidney (the book’s dedicatee), and the mysterious E.K., who signs the Epistle (162-93).

Probably, E.K. does not refer to Edward Kirke (1553-1613), who had been a sizar with Spenser at Cambridge, even though Kirke’s initials match E.K.’s and Spenser mentions ‘Mystress Kerke’ (either Edward’s mother or his wife) in a letter to Harvey written on 16 October 1579 (Letters 4.63, 257-8; see Hadfield 2012: 122-3). More likely, Spenser authored the Epistle himself, as well as the General Argument, the prose Arguments prefacing the twelve eclogues, and their detailed glosses, perhaps in collusion with Harvey (Starnes 1944; Schleiner 1990; Waldman 1991; Carroll 2005; McCabe 2010: 465-8). Consequently, readers may more profitably turn away from this ‘authorial wild goose chase’ to ‘question the purpose and nature of [E.K.’s] . . . strange exegetical performance’ (Kearney 2011: 143n2). In his performance, E.K. functions as part of Spenser’s elaborate fiction about his monumental book (McCanles 1982): not merely does E.K. serve as the presenter of Spenser’s literary career but he functions as a ‘diagnostic and analytic . . . commentary on, and exploration of, the place of such books in his culture’ (Kearney 2011: 114).

As both performance and prolegomenon, the Epistle is important in a history of the book and of English literature (cf. Tribble 1993: 72-87; Slights 2001: 46-52; Cook 2011).