ABSTRACT
The first reader of The Faerie Queene who left a record of his response, Dixon made notes in the margin of a copy of the 1590 edition of FQ I-III, now in the possession of the Earl of Bessborough. His annotations can be dated 1597, for in his note to I xii 36 he refers to the 39 years of peace that England had enjoyed since the accession of Queen Elizabeth (1558), which he understands as allegorized in the wedding day of Una and the Red Cross Knight. Beyond the marginalia and his name, which appears on the title page of the volume in the same hand and ink as the annotations, nothing is known of him, but the provenance of the volume points to a John Dixon of Hilden, near Tonbridge, Kent.
