John Donne Popular Books

John Donne Biography & Facts

John Donne ( DUN) (1571 or 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London (1621–1631). He is considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs and satires. He is also known for his sermons. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of English society. Another important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often theorised. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits. Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. He spent much of the money he inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes and travel. In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he had twelve children. In 1615 he was ordained Anglican deacon and then priest, although he did not want to take holy orders and only did so because the king ordered it. He served as a member of Parliament in 1601 and in 1614. Biography Early life Donne was born in London in 1571 or 1572, into a recusant Roman Catholic family when practice of that religion was illegal in England. Donne was the third of six children. His father, also named John Donne, was married to Elizabeth Heywood. He was of Welsh descent and a warden of the Ironmongers Company in the City of London. He avoided unwelcome government attention out of fear of religious persecution.His father died in 1576, when Donne was four years old, leaving his mother, Elizabeth, with the responsibility of raising the children alone. Heywood was also from a recusant Roman Catholic family, the daughter of John Heywood, the playwright, and sister of the Reverend Jasper Heywood, a Jesuit priest and translator. She was a great-niece of Thomas More. A few months after her husband died, Donne's mother married Dr. John Syminges, a wealthy widower with three children of his own. Donne was educated privately. There is no evidence to support the popular claim that he was taught by Jesuits. In 1583, at the age of 11, he began studies at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford. After three years of studies there, Donne was admitted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for another three years. Donne could not obtain a degree from either institution because of his Catholicism, since he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy required to graduate. In 1591 he was accepted as a student at the Thavies Inn legal school, one of the Inns of Chancery in London. On 6 May 1592, he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court.In 1593, five years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada and during the intermittent Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604), Queen Elizabeth issued the first English statute against sectarian dissent from the Church of England, titled "An Act for restraining Popish recusants". It defined "Popish recusants" as those "convicted for not repairing to some Church, Chapel, or usual place of Common Prayer to hear Divine Service there, but forbearing the same contrary to the tenor of the laws and statutes heretofore made and provided in that behalf". Donne's brother Henry was also a university student prior to his arrest in 1593 for harbouring a Catholic priest, William Harrington, and died in Newgate Prison of bubonic plague, leading Donne to begin questioning his Catholic faith.During and after his education, Donne spent much of his considerable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel. Although no record details precisely where Donne travelled, he crossed Europe. He later fought alongside the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh against the Spanish at Cadiz (1596) and the Azores (1597), and witnessed the loss of the Spanish flagship, the San Felipe. According to Izaak Walton, his earliest biographer, ... he returned not back into England till he had stayed some years, first in Italy, and then in Spain, where he made many useful observations of those countries, their laws and manner of government, and returned perfect in their languages. By the age of 25 he was well prepared for the diplomatic career he appeared to be seeking. He was appointed chief secretary to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton, and was established at Egerton's London home, York House, Strand, close to the Palace of Whitehall, then the most influential social centre in England. Marriage to Anne More During the next four years, Donne fell in love with Egerton's niece Anne More. They were secretly married just before Christmas in 1601, against the wishes of both Egerton and Anne's father George More, who was Lieutenant of the Tower. Upon discovery, this wedding ruined Donne's career, getting him dismissed and put in Fleet Prison, along with the Church of England priest Samuel Brooke, who married them, and his brother Christopher, who stood in, in the absence of George More, to give Anne away. Donne was released shortly thereafter when the marriage was proved to be valid, and he soon secured the release of the other two. Walton tells us that when Donne wrote to his wife to tell her about losing his post, he wrote after his name: John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done. It was not until 1609 that Donne was reconciled with his father-in-law and received his wife's dowry. After his release, Donne had to accept a retired country life in a small house in Pyrford, Surrey, owned by Anne's cousin, Sir Francis Wooley, where they lived until the end of 1604. In spring 1605 they moved to another small house in Mitcham, Surrey, where he scraped a meagre living as a lawyer, while Anne Donne bore a new baby almost every year. Though he also worked as an assistant pamphleteer to Thomas Morton writing anti-Catholic pamphlets, Donne was in a constant state of financial insecurity.Anne gave birth to twelve children in sixteen years of marriage, including two stillbirths—their eighth and then, in 1617, their last child. The ten surviving children were Constance, John, George, Francis, Lucy (named after Donne's patron Lucy, Countess of Bedford, her godmother), Bridget, Mary, Nicholas, Margaret and Elizabeth. Three, Francis, Nicholas and Mary, died before they were ten.In.... Discover the John Donne popular books. Find the top 100 most popular John Donne books.

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  • The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne synopsis, comments

    The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne

    John Donne

    This Modern Library edition contains all of John Donne's great metaphysical love poetry. Here are such wellknown songs and sonnets as "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," "The Ext...

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    The Prince Who Would Be King

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    John Donne

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    The Greatest Poems of John Donne

    John Donne

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    Poems and Prose

    Gerard Hopkins & W. Gardner

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    John Donne

    John Donne & Paul Muldoon

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    The Complete John Donne

    John Donne

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    Complete Plays of Robert Browning

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    Super-Infinite

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    Poetry 101

    Susan Dalzell

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    The Love Poems of John Donne

    John Donne

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    Companhia na crise

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    The Lady and the Poet

    Maeve Haran

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    Hyperion

    John Keats

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    The Life of Dr. John Donne

    Izaac Walton

    John Donne was an English poet and cleric in the Church of England.  Donne is considered to be the most famous of the metaphysical poets and his poems are noted for its sensua...

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    John Donne

    Andrew Hadfield

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    The Temple

    George Herbert

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    John Donne

    Roz Kaveney

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  • Complete Poetical Works of John Donne synopsis, comments

    Complete Poetical Works of John Donne

    John Donne

    The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature's finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents the complete poetical works of John Donne, with beauti...

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    THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN KEATS

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    John Donne

    John Carey

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    Metaphysical Poetry

    Colin Burrow

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    Quartet

    Leah Broad

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    Collected Poems of John Donne

    John Donne & Neil Azevedo

    A complete and unabridged eedition of the collected verse of John Donne. Donne, 1572–1631, was born in London, England, and, as evidenced by the verse collected here, is one of the...

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    The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition

    Robert Browning

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  • The Complete Poems of John Donne synopsis, comments

    The Complete Poems of John Donne

    John Donne

    Born in 1572 in London England, John Donne was an English Jacobean poet of exceptional skill, whose poetry was known for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor. Whi...