And that start also applied to the other two journeys.

Spenser’s was particularly interesting.  What we know about him is very little, forcing biographers to make cautious surmises—but I discuss this in my introduction in Book Two.  A huge amount of research had to go in all aspects of Elizabethan society, both in England and in Ireland, as well as such subjects as travel.   And, of course, the territories over which he travelled, those who were significantly associated with him, where he lived, and so forth.  In his case as well, his writings—both poetry and letters.

All this research was necessary just to let me allow myself to live with them and begin to explore how Spenser saw, felt, thought, fought, created, and what happened when he died mysteriously, and Ben Jonson’s strange account of his death.