About this Journal

The Spenser Review is an online journal published three times each year, supported by the International Spenser Society. The Review publishes book reviews, essay-reviews and writing of various kinds on topics in and around the work of Edmund Spenser. The writing that appears in the journal ranges from historically and textually focused scholarship to a wide array of theoretical, experimental, collaborative, exploratory, and playful forms of writing. The mission of the journal is to complement, reflect and provoke exciting work being undertaken on (and adjacent to) Spenser's writings, and the changing intellectual, pedagogical, cultural and institutional structures in which they are read.

In 2023 The Spenser Review moved to its new online home, hosted by Janeway Systems. This transitional period in the journal's existence is being overseen by an editorial collective comprising the officers of the International Spenser Society and the editors of Spenser Studies, assisted by a newly constituted editorial board and a new Managing Editor. 

The Spenser Review was founded in 1969–70 by Elizabeth Bieman and A. Kent Hieatt, and was originally published from the University of Western Ontario, with the endorsement of the Renaissance Society of America. Until 2001 its title was Spenser Newsletter. In 2008, Sheila Cavanagh at Emory University and David Lee Miller at the University of South Carolina saw the journal from print to digital publication. In 2013, the International Spenser Society restructured the journal’s management and format, and it has continued to develop under subsequent editors, becoming a widely recognized hub for a wide variety of Spenserian engagements.