C. S. Lewis on The Faerie Queene

“The things we read about in [The Faerie Queene] are not like life, but the experience of reading it is like living.”

“The Faerie Queene is perhaps the most difficult poem in English. Quite how difficult, I am only now beginning to realize after forty years of reading it.”

“Beyond all doubt it is best to have made one's first acquaintance with Spenser in a very large—and, preferably, illustrated—edition of The Faerie Queene, on a wet day, between the ages of twelve and sixteen.”

“It is not, perhaps, absolutely necessary to have a large edition in fact; but it is imperative that you should think of The Faerie Queene as a book suitable for reading in a heavy volume, at a table—a book to which limp leather is insulting—a massy, antique story with a blackletter flavour about it—a book for devout, prolonged, and leisurely perusal.”