Research Guides: Shakespeare Studies: John Donne

John Donne (1572-1631)

John Donne was born into a Roman Catholic family. He entered the University of Oxford at age 12; he later transferred to the University of Cambridge and subsequently studied law. An adventurer in youth, he hoped for a high public appointment, but his clandestine marriage to his employer's daughter ruined his prospects. He converted to Anglicanism; ordained in 1615, he became a preacher of great power and eloquence. He is noted for his love lyrics, religious verse and treatises, and sermons. His secular poetry, most written early in his career, is direct, intense, brilliantly witty, and daringly imaginative. Later his tone darkened with works such as the Anniversaries (1611-12), two long poems meditating on the decay of the world. His 19 famous Holy Sonnets (written 1607-13) were published posthumously. Among his prose works, many as dramatic and intimate as his poetry, the most enduring is Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624).

Websites

Digital Donne (Texas A&M University)
DigitalDonne constitutes volume 1 of The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne (8 vols. in 11 parts, Indiana UP, 1995-2022), a collaborative edition drawing on the labors of over 30 scholars from the United States and abroad. The project was organized in 1980 and enjoyed support from the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 through to its completion in 2022.
John Donne Sermons
One of the Digital Collections of the Harold B. Lee Library Brigham Young University, the text of this electronic archive is based on the ten-volume Sermons of John Donne, edited by George Potter and Evelyn Simpson and published by University of California Press between 1953-1962. This site seems to work best with Internet Explorer.
The John Donne Society
The John Donne Society was formally organized in 1986, inspired in part by scholarly meetings of the editors of The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne