The following version of the poem was used to create this guide: Spenser, Edmund. "Amoretti LXXV." Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45189/amoretti-lxxv-one-day-i-wrote-her-name

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

Edmund Spenser was, in his lifetime, celebrated as the foremost poet of the early modern era. He was born in London sometime around 1552, though exact details of his early life have not survived. He studied at Cambridge and married Machabyas Childe around 1579. They had two children before her death about 15 years later. Shortly thereafter, he courted and married Elizabeth Boyle, to whom the Amoretti sonnet cycle is dedicated. They had one child together.

In 1590, Spenser published the Faerie Queene, an allegorical celebration of the life of Elizabeth I. He published a number of works of poetry on historical and romantic subjects. Spenser also wrote "A View of the Present State of Ireland," in which he advocated for complete erasure of Irish culture and language by violence. Shortly thereafter, his castle in Ireland was burned and he was driven back to London. He died less than a year later, in 1599.

In this poem, Spenser writes of the power of poetry to immortalize love.