About this ebook
John Donne was a complex and contradictory figure: a sensualist who composed erotic and playful love poetry in his youth, raised as a Catholic but later becoming one of the most admired Protestant preachers of his time. The Selected Poems 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.
With an introduction and notes by Ilona Bell
About the author
John Donne (1572-1631) was the most outstanding of the English Metaphysical Poets and a churchman famous for his spellbinding sermons.
Ilona Bell is Professor of English Literature at Williams College, Massachusetts. She has published widely on Renaissance literature and is the author of several books on Donne, his courtship, and his love poetry.
