to-do ironmonger. His mother was the
daughter of playwright John Heywood and
a great niece of Sir Thomas More. Donne
was educated by members of the Catholic
Jesuit order and began attending the Uni-
versity of Oxford in England at the age of
eleven. After three years, he entered the
University of Cambridge. He failed to at-
tain a university degree, as he refused to
take the required Oath of Supremacy that
recognized the monarch of England as su-
preme head of the Anglican church. After
his university career, Donne entered
Lincoln’s Inn in London to train as a law-
yer. He was often tormented by questions
of religious faith and dogma, and his reli-
gious doubt intensified when his brother
Henry died in 1593 while in prison, where
he had been sent for harboring a priest. In
this period he was also writing poetry that
explored the physical and emotional in-
tensity of love.
Donne took part in an expedition led
by the Earl of Essex in 1596 against the
Spanish at Cadiz and the Azores. After this
adventure he was appointed secretary to
Sir Thomas Egerton, the Queen’s Lord
Keeper of the Seal. However, Donne’s pub-
lic career was ended by his secret marriage
in 1601 to Ann More, the niece of Egerton’s
wife. For this Donne was sacked from his
position, arrested, and briefly imprisoned.
After his release he moved to Surrey, where
he eked out a bare living as a lawyer and
depended on friends and family to sup-
port his growing family.
Donne wrote satires of English man-
ners and also meditations on suicide
(Biathanatos) and religion, including
Pseudo-Martyr, a criticism of the Catholic
tradition of martyrdom. A series of “Holy
Sonnets” expressed his views on death and
sin. In 1601 Donne was elected a member
of parliament. He had gained a wealthy
patron in Sir Robert Drury, for whom he
wroteAnniversaries, An Anatomy of the
World, a work that memorialized Sir
Drury’s daughter, Elizabeth, andOf the
Progress of the Soulin 1612. Another satire
of Catholicism,Ignatius His Conclave,re-
flected the new astronomy of Galileo Ga-
lilei and proposed sending a colony of set-
tlers to the moon. Although he petitioned
the king to return to public service, he
was refused. On the king’s recommenda-
tion, however, he was ordained a priest in
the Church of England in 1615. By this
time Donne had become a deeply religious
man, attaining the post of reader in divin-
ity at Lincoln’s Inn, and was changing his
focus to religion. Donne became the royal
chaplain in 1615, and finally earned a doc-
tor of divinity degree from Cambridge in- His rising status in the Church of
England did not relieve a deep grief
felt at the death of his wife in childbirth
in 1617. In 1621 he was appointed the
dean of Saint Paul’s, where his eloquent
sermons drew large audiences to the
cathedral. After falling ill in 1623, he wrote
the Devotions, essays on death and
salvation. His most famous speech, the
“Death’s Duel” sermon, was delivered be-
fore King Charles I in 1631, at a time
when Donne was already on his own
deathbed.
Donne’s poetry is inventive, eloquent,
often paradoxical, and filled with surpris-
ing, vivid metaphors and “conceits,” which
combine radically different ideas and im-
agery. His poetic rhythms discarded the
measured, traditional style in favor of
abrupt and jarring rhythms that were
meant to remind the reader of everyday
speech. His elegies, epigrams, and letters
in verse were published after his death in
Songs and Sonnets.Donne, John