"The object of this volume is to excite interest in one of the greatest poems of English literature, which for all its greatness is but little read and known--to excite this interest not only in young persons who are not yet able to read "The Faerie Queene," with its archaisms of language, its distant ways and habits of life and thought, its exquisite melodies that only a cultivated ear can catch and appreciate, but also in adults." (From the Author's introduction)