John Donne

John and Anne Donne spent a major part of their married life in abject poverty. Yet, they were very close to each other. When Anne died on 15 August 1617, Donne vowed never to marry again and brought up his children single handedly.

In their sixteen years of married life, Anne bore him twelve children, two of whom were stillbirths. Their ten surviving children were Constance, John, George, Francis, Lucy, Bridget, Mary, Nicholas, Margaret, and Elizabeth.

Towards the end of his life, John Donne was afflicted with what is believed to be stomach cancer and died on 31 March 1631. He was later buried in Old St. Paul’s Cathedral. The John Donne Memorial, a bust statue sculpted from bronze by Nigel Boonham, was commissioned in the churchyard of the Cathedral in 2012.

John Donne was born on 22 January 1573 in London. His father, also named John Donne, was a warden of the Ironmongers Company and a practicing Roman Catholic at a time, when adherence to the religion was a punishable offence.

His mother, Elizabeth Heywood, also from a recusant Roman Catholic family, was the daughter of the reputed playwright and poet John Heywood. He had several siblings including a brother named Henry and two sisters named Mary and Catherine.

In 1576, when John was not even four years old, his father died. His mother remarried Dr. John Syminges, a wealthy widower with three children, within a few months of her first husband’s death. Thus young John Donne was raised by his mother and stepfather.

Although there is no proof, it is generally believed that Donne began his education at home under a Jesuit. His maternal uncle, Jasper Heywood, was a Jesuit priest and that might have given rise to such ideas.

In 1583, as John Donne entered his eleventh year, he was admitted to Hart Hall, now Hertford College, University of Oxford. He studied there for three years and then shifted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for three more years.

In 1593, his brother Henry, a university student, was arrested for harboring William Harrington, a Catholic priest. Subsequently, he was lodged in Newgate prison, where he died of bubonic plague. The incident shook John Donne’s conviction in Roman Catholicism.

He then travelled across Europe, subsequently joining the Anglo-Spanish War. In 1596, he fought with Sir Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh against the Spanish at Cadiz and witnessed the city being ransacked by the British troop.

Next in June 1597, he took part in the British expedition to Azores. Once the expedition failed, instead of returning to England with the armada, Donne spent some time in Italy and Spain before returning to the country.

By the time he returned to England in 1598, 25 year old John Donne was prepared for the diplomatic career. That very year, he was appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton.

It is plausible that he had by then become an Anglican; otherwise, he would not have been appointed to the post. He now started living in Egerton's London home, York House, in the Strand and was treated, not as a servant, but more as a friend.

’Devotions upon Emergent Occasions’, which John Donne wrote in 1623 from his sickbed, is said to be his most important work. The book has been divided into 23 parts, each of which covers what he thought and reflected upon on a single day.

‘Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed’, full of erotic imagery, is a major example of Donne’s metaphysical poems. Through this poem, he reinvented Petrarchan poetic conventions of wooing from afar and at the same time, used Ovid's sexually aggressive language and style, thus creating an early specimen of libertine poetry.