John Donne Biography Quotes 30 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
John Donne was born in London in 1572 into a prominent recusant Catholic family during a period of intense religious tension in England. Through his mother, Elizabeth Heywood, he was connected to the playwright John Heywood and to Sir Thomas More, a lineage that shaped his early formation and his awareness of the costs of conscience. Donne's younger brother, Henry, died in prison after being arrested for harboring a Catholic priest, a tragedy that impressed upon Donne the dangers faced by Catholics under Elizabeth I. These experiences, together with his wide reading, became part of the emotional and intellectual ground from which his mature work later grew.

Donne studied at Oxford (Hart Hall) and at Cambridge while still in his early teens, but did not take degrees, likely because his family's Catholic stance made swearing the required oaths impossible. He then entered Thavies Inn and Lincoln's Inn to study law and to prepare for a secular career. In these circles he met lawyers, courtiers, and writers, absorbing the arguments and wit of London's professional class. He began writing verses that circulated in manuscript among friends, producing early Satires and Elegies that were bolder, more skeptical, and more intellectually compressed than much Elizabethan verse.

Ambition, Travel, and the Early Poems
In the 1590s Donne sought advancement at court and served as a secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper. He also traveled with expeditions to Cadiz (1596) and the Azores (1597), experiences that furnished him with images of hazard, navigation, and discovery that recur in his poetry. During this period he composed many of the Songs and Sonnets, including poems later known as The Flea, The Good-Morrow, and The Sun Rising, whose startling conceits and intimate arguments helped define what later critics called metaphysical poetry. Ben Jonson, though very different in style, recognized Donne's originality, and admired him "for some things" as unmatched in their time.

Secret Marriage and Hardship
In 1601 Donne secretly married Anne More, the niece of his employer's patron and the daughter of Sir George More. The match, made without the family's consent, precipitated a crisis. Donne lost his post, was briefly imprisoned, and faced years of financial difficulty. The couple endured hardship but built a household marked by loyalty and intense affection. Over the years Anne bore many children; the pressures of so large a family kept Donne seeking secure income while he continued to write. Among the writings that circulated in these years was Biathanatos, a provocative treatise on self-homicide that argued with theological subtlety about intention, charity, and divine judgment; he withheld it from publication, aware of its potential to scandalize.

Donne's transition away from Catholicism, already in motion, became explicit in the reign of James I. His Pseudo-Martyr (1610), arguing that Catholics might take the Oath of Allegiance to the king, won him royal attention. Friends and patrons, including Sir Robert Drury and the literary Countess of Bedford, helped him navigate court politics and offered a stage for his talents. While living in Drury House he memorialized the young Elizabeth Drury in The First Anniversary and The Second Anniversary (1611, 1612), poems that meditate on mortality and the disorders of the age as much as they praise their subject.

Ordination and Public Voice
James I pressed Donne to enter the Church of England, and in 1615 Donne was ordained. Reluctant at first, he soon became one of the most celebrated preachers of his generation, combining learned theology with vivid imagery and a searching sense of human frailty. He served as a royal chaplain and, for a time, as Reader in Divinity at Lincoln's Inn, where his sermons drew lawyers and courtiers. In 1621 he was appointed Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, a post that gave him a central pulpit in the spiritual and civic life of London. His preaching cultivated a congregation attentive to the moral emergencies of the city and the nation.

Loss, Illness, and Devotional Prose
Personal grief marked his middle years. Anne Donne died in 1617 after a difficult childbirth, a loss that shadowed his devotions and sermons. Donne increasingly turned to sacred verse, revising and deepening poems now known as the Holy Sonnets, among them "Batter my heart" and "Death be not proud", where metaphysical wit meets penitential urgency. During a serious illness in 1623 he wrote Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624). Its Meditations and Expostulations fuse scriptural reflection with intimate observation of the body's suffering; Meditation XVII offers the resonant phrases "No man is an island" and "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee", lines that would echo across centuries and later inspire writers such as Ernest Hemingway.

Late Sermons and Final Years
Donne's late sermons exhibit a grave eloquence, inflected by a sense of nearing judgment and of the soul's dependence on grace. Preaching before rulers and commoners, he addressed the spiritual meanings of national events, public illness, and private despair. In February 1631 he delivered his last great sermon, later published as Death's Duel, often read as his own valediction. He died in March 1631 and was buried in St Paul's. His monument, carved by Nicholas Stone and depicting him in a shroud, became one of the cathedral's notable memorials and, remarkably, survived the Great Fire of London to stand in the rebuilt church.

Style, Circulation, and Reputation
Donne's poems mostly circulated in manuscript during his lifetime, read and copied among friends, patrons, and fellow writers such as George Herbert and Ben Jonson. The first substantial printed collection of his poems appeared posthumously. Their hallmarks are striking conceits, dramatic argument, abrupt turns of voice, and a learned play of theology, law, philosophy, and the new sciences. He carried into sacred verse the same intensity found in his erotic and occasional poems, treating love and faith as experiences that test intellect and will. His prose, especially the sermons and Devotions, blends Latinate cadence with searching introspection.

Legacy
Donne's influence was immediate among 17th-century poets, including Herbert and Richard Crashaw, then dimmed as taste shifted toward neoclassical clarity. Izaak Walton's Life of Dr. John Donne (1640) kept his memory vivid, presenting the arc of a worldly wit transformed into a searching divine. In the 20th century, critics and poets rediscovered Donne's power; T. S. Eliot and others praised his "unified sensibility", and the phrase "metaphysical poets" became a durable label for his circle. Today Donne is read as a poet and preacher whose art confronts the extremities of desire, doubt, and devotion, and whose sentences, whether in a love lyric or from the pulpit at St Paul's, continue to press thought and feeling to their furthest reach.

Our collection contains 30 quotes who is written by John, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Truth - Love - Nature.

Other people realated to John: George Herbert (Poet), John Heywood (Dramatist), Henry Wotton (Author)

• 1651 Letters to Several Persons of Honour (Collection of Letters)
• 1633 Divine Poems (Poetry Collection)
• 1633 Elegies (Poetry Collection)
• 1633 Holy Sonnets (Poetry Collection)
• 1631 Poems of John Donne (Poetry Collection)
• 1601 Songs and Sonnets (Poetry Collection)
• 1593 Satires (Poetry Collection)

• Wikipedia