Bell Ilona - Selected Poems: Donne

GENERAL EDITOR, POETRY: CHRISTOPHER RICKS

SELECTED POEMS

JOHN DONNE was born in 1572 into a family of devout Catholics. He studied at Oxford University, travelled on the Continent, and then studied law at Lincolns Inn. In 15967 Donne joined the Earl of Essexs military expeditions to the Cadiz Islands and the Azores. In 1597 he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Donne fell in love with Egertons niece, Anne More; having made a clandestine marriage contract, they were secretly married in December 1601. Donne lost his position in Egertons service, but the marriage was declared legal in April 1602. In the years following his marriage, Donne was a Member of Parliament and Justice of the Peace. He obtained temporary positions and patronage from a number of aristocrats who are the subjects of his poems. He was ordained as an Anglican minister in 1615, becoming Royal Chaplain and first Reader in Divinity at Lincolns Inn. In 1617 Anne Donne died, after giving birth to their twelfth child. In 1621. Donne was appointed Dean of St Pauls Cathedral. John Donne died in 1631, at the age of fifty-nine. The first collected edition of his poetry was published posthumously in 1633.

ILONA BELL is Professor of English Literature at Williams College. She has a BA from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from Boston College. She has received fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bunting Institute and the Mellon Foundation. She is the author of Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship (1998), and has published numerous articles and book chapters on Donne, Shakespeare, Herbert, Jonson, Elizabeth I, Milton, the Maydens of London, and Elizabeth Cary. She is currently completing two books on Donne: John Donne and Anne More, a biographical study of Donnes courtship, and We Adventured Equally: John Donne and Anne More, a critical interpretation of Donnes love poetry.

With an Introduction and Notes by
ILONA BELL

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This selection first published in Penguin Classics 2006

Editorial material copyright Ilona Bell, 2006

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The moral right of the editor has been asserted

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ISBN: 978-0-14-196482-9