John Donne: A Selection Of His Poetry (Poetry Library)

The Story

Though his reputation has suffered periodic eclipses, it has increased steadily since the publication in 1633 of Poems By J.D. With Elegies On the Author's Death . The 20th century, however, was remarkable for the broadening and deepening of interest in his work. A poet of love and friendship, Donne also employed dialectic, monologue and psychological analysis to wrestle with his religious, philosophic and personal doubts and with the 'wearisome condition of humanity' in a world that appeared as puzzling and riven as ours does today. From his early Songs and Sonnets, Elegies, Epithalamions and Satyres to Verse Letters, Anniversaries, Epicedes, Obsequies and Divine Poems, Donne's extraordinary, rich, complex and demanding poetry expresses, as John Hayward comments in his introduction, 'for us our hopes and fears of an analogous human condition'.