Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, a Prose Rendering, Volume 1 of 3: A Text-Faithful Translation of the 1590s Epic Poem

by Rebecca K. Reynolds, Simon Vance (Narrator)

Audio CD

Published January 5, 2026

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This is the first volume of Rebecca K. Reynolds prose retelling of Spenser. Having never read the original, I can’t speak to how successful the adaptation is. My hunch is that adapting this poetry into prose would be a bit like adapting Beowulf or Gawain and the Green Knight into prose—I feel like some of the splendour has been deflated from the original, but we will see. So far, it is a strange book and I don’t wholly like its allegorical nature, but I’ll press on. Certainly I can see its influence on Lewis and others, and especially John Bunyan. Actually, I think a young lad who enjoys Bunyan and knight adventures would be the perfect audience for this.