Author Description

This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of John Donne (1572-1631). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, this authoritative edition enables students to study Donne's work in the order in which it was written, and, wherever possible, using the text of the first published version. The volume presents a wholly new edition of Donne's verse and prose, consisting of a selection of Donne's compositions that circulated in manuscript or in print form during his lifetime. Each text is paired with a generous complement of historical and textual annotation, which enables students to access and appreciate the excitement with which Donne's contemporaries—his first readers—discovered his famous and incomparable originality, audacity, ingenuity, and wit. The edition incorporates new directions and emphases in scholarly editing that equip students with a better understanding of the texts and the contexts in which they were produced, such as the history of readership and the history of texts as material objects. Explanatory notes and commentary are included, to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Donne, and a Chronology.