Best Selling Books by John Donne

This authoritative edition was formerly published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Donne''s poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by rarely published letters and extracts from Donne''ssermons - to give the essence of his work and thinking. John Donne (1572-1631) is today celebrated as one of the greatest of the metaphysical poets, whose verse was daringly original and whose use of imagery and conceits marked a new, intellectual approach to poetry. His Satires, Elegies, and Songs and Sonnets, which contain his most famous love poems,were complemented by his religious writing, both verse and prose. He was one of the most renowned preachers of his day, and this volume does equal justice to the full range of his work. In addition to nearly all his English poetry this volume includes over 130 extracts from Donne''s sermons, aswell as the full text of his last sermon, ''Death''s Duel''. A distinguishing feature of the selection is that the works are arranged in the chronological order of their composition.

John Donne''s poetry is marked by a scientific colloquial directness and a complex, even tortured, intelligence. It falls into two classes. There is the early ironic and erotic poetry that contains some of the finest English love poetry and also his later, religious poetry.

This classic edition of Donne''s Divine Poems contains an extensive and invaluable critical apparatus by Helen Gardner.

John Donne was an English poet and cleric in the Church of England. Donne''s poetry, which included sonnets, elegies, religious and love poems, is noted for its sensual style. Donne is often considered the greatest of the metaphysical poets. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions is a book of prose that discusses topics such as death, rebirth, and sin.

Regarded by many as the greatest of the Metaphysical poets, John Donne (1572-1631) was also among the most intriguing figures of the Elizabethan age. A sensualist who composed erotic and playful love poetry in his youth, he was raised a Catholic but later became one of the most admired Protestant preachers of his time. The Collected Poetry reflects this wide diversity, and includes his youthful songs and sonnets, epigrams, elegies, letters, satires, and the profoundly moving Divine Poems composed towards the end of his life. From joyful poems such as ''The Flea'', which transforms the image of a louse into something marvellous, to the intimate and intense Holy Sonnets, Donne breathed new vigour into poetry by drawing lucid and often startling metaphors from the world in which he lived. His poems remain among the most passionate, profound and spiritual in the English language.

There may be no finer edition of Donne''s Songs and Sonets than Redpath''s annotated volume. Out of print for a decade, it is reprinted here in its second, revised edition. The book''s twofold origin is evident on every page of commentary: it arises partly from a life of scholarship and partly from Redpath''s experiences as a teacher.

John Donne was an English scholar, poet, soldier and secretary born into a Catholic family, a remnant of the Catholic Revival, who reluctantly became a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets.

This selection of John Donne''s most powerful prose shows that the man remembered predominantly for his poetry was also a preacher, and a prose writer of extraordinary power. In it, he explores the metaphysical collision between poetry and religion, suicide and duty, the secular and the spiritual that characterized his times. Edited with an introduction and notes by Neil Rhodes.

This Modern Library edition contains all of John Donne''s great metaphysical love poetry. Here are such well-known songs and sonnets as "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," "The Extasie," and "A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day," along with the love elegies "Jealosie," "His Parting From Her," and "To His Mistris Going to Bed." Presented as well are Donne''s satires, epigrams, verse letters, and holy sonnets, along with his most ambitious and important poems, the Anniversaries. In addition, there is a generous sampling of Donne''s prose, including many of his private letters; Ignatius His Conclave, a satiric onslaught on the Jesuits; excerpts from Biathanatos, his celebrated defense of suicide; and his most famous sermons, concluding with the final "Death''s Duell." "We have only to read [Donne]," wrote Virginia Woolf, "to submit to the sound of that passionate and penetrating voice, and his figure rises again across the waste of the years more erect, more imperious, more inscrutable than any of his time."

This volume of John Donne''s writings begins with a biography of John Donne''s life, as told by Donne''s writer friend, Izaak Walton. Walton gives readers a close look at Donne''s past, which was plagued with the loss of many close family members. This biographical information helps readers to make better sense of the somber devotions contained in this volume. In his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Donne concentrates on the miserable condition of man and the inevitability of death. The devotions are all structured the same, each beginning with a meditation followed by an expostulation and a prayer. These devotions serve as a preview for Donne''s "Death''s Duel Sermon," written near his death in 1631 as his funeral sermon. While "Death''s Duel" paints a grave picture of earthly life tormented by pain and death, it hopes for a bright future in God''s love through Christ''s resurrection and ascension. -Emmalon Davis, CCEL Staff Writer

"Based on an exhaustive study of the manuscript and print history of Donne''s poetry, this edition presents newly edited critical texts of the poems and a comprehensive digest of the critical-scholarly commentary on them from Donne''s time forward. Textual introductions briefly locate the poems in the context of Donne''s life or poetic development, outline the 17th-century textual history of the poems, and sketch the treatment of the text by modern editors. A detailed textual apparatus presents variants collated from many sources and traces the lines of textual transmission"--Provided by publisher.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1839.

JOHN DONNE: SELECTED POEMS A selection of the finest poems by British poet John Donne. John Donne was, Robert Graves said, a Muse poet, a poet who wrote passionately of the Muse. It is easy to see Donne as a love poet, in the tradition of love poets such as Bernard de Ventadour, Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarch and Torquato Tasso. Donne has written his fair share of love poems. There are the bawdy allusions to the phallus in The Flea, while The Comparison parodies the adoration poem, with references to the sweat drops of my mistress breast . Like William Shakespeare in his parody sonnet my mistress eyes are nothing like the sun, Donne sends up the Petrarchan and courtly love genre with gross comparisons ( Like spermatic issue of ripe menstruous boils ). In The Bait, there is the archetypal Renaissance opening line Come live with me, and be my love, as used by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, among others. And there is the complex, ambivalent eroticism of The Extasie, a much celebrated love poem, and the 19th Elegy, where features Donne s famous couplet: Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below. The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne celebrate the many emotions of love, feelings that are so familiar in love poetry from Sappho to Adrienne Rich. Donne does not quite cover every emotion of love, but a good deal of them. In The Canonization, we find the age-old Neo-platonic belief that two can become as one ( we two being one, or we shall/ Be one, he writes in Lovers Infiniteness ), a common belief in love poetry. John Donne s love poetry, like (nearly) all love poetry, self-reflexive. Although he would ne er parted be, as he writes in Song: Sweetest love, I do not go, he knows that love poetry comes out of loss. The beloved woman is not there, so art takes her place. The Songs and Sonnets arise from loss, loss of love; they take the place of love. For, if he were clasping his beloved in those feverish embraces as described in The Extasie and Elegy, he would not, obviously, bother with poetry. Love poetry has this ambivalent, difficult relationship with love. The poem is not love, and is no real substitute for it. And writing of love exacerbates the pain and the insecurity of the experience of love. "

Holy Sonnets by John Donne are a series of nineteen poems originally written in 1609-1610 and have been tied to Donne''s conversion to Anglicanism. These poems of John Donne have become some of his most highly regarded and most popular works. Included are Holy Sonnet 10 ("Death be not Proud") and Holy Sonnet 14 ("Batter my heart, three-person''d God; for you").

John Donne (1572-1631) is best known as the greatest English metaphysical poet. But there was another dimension to Donne''s life and writing that, if less well known, is no less profound and beautiful. Born into an aristocratic Catholic family, Donne joined the Church of England at the age of twenty-one out of fear of persecution. At the age of forty-three, he gave up his preoccupations with secular prestige and devoted himself utterly to religion. It was eight years later when, battered with fever, the deaths of his beloved wife, several of his children, and many dear lifelong friends, he composed Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. There is both trauma and great drama in this extended meditation on the meaning of mortality, the possibility of salvation, and the true nature of the passage of eternal life. With a new introduction by poet and biographer Andrew Motion, one of the most revered books of Christian devotion speaks to us again of the higher aspirations of man and the always-present possibility of a relationship with God. This long out of print edition also contains Donne''s last sermon, "Death''s Duel" as well as the short colorful biography of him written by his contemporary Izaak Walton.