The Faerie Queene - Paperbackby Edmund Spenser (Author) The Faerie Queene is Edmund Spenser's magnum opus, composed for Queen Elizabeth I. The epic poem is incomplete, as only six of the intended twelve books were published before the poet's death. Despite that, it stands as one of the longest poems in the English language. Spenser used Aristotle's list of virtues as the foundation for his work. Each of the six books follows a different knight who symbolize a unique virtue: the