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Donne was born and raised in a Roman Catholic family. Two of Donne's relatives had been punished for their Catholicism; his brother had died of a fever in prison after harboring a priest, and an uncle, a Jesuit, executed by being hanged, drawn, and quartered. Queen Elizabeth's government, though by contemporary standards tolerant, still uniformly burdened Catholics with harassment and financial penalties.
Donne was educated at both Oxford ( Hertford College) and Cambridge. As a young man he travelled on the Continent and in 1596–97 accompanied the Earl of Essex on his expeditions to Cádiz and the Azores. On his return he became secretary to Baron Ellesmere and began to achieve a reputation as a poet. His writings of this period include many of his songs and sonnets, and they are notable for their realistic and sensual style. Donne also composed many satirical verses that betrayed a searching and sometimes caustic outlook.
The account of Donne's life in the 1590s that comes down to us through Donne's own poems and an early biographer, Izaak WaltonIzaak Walton ( August 9, 1593 December 15, 1683) was an English writer, author of The Compleat Angler''. Walton was born at Stafford; the register of his baptism gives his father's name as Jervis, and nothing more is known of his parentage. He settled in, gives us a picture of a young rake. Scholars believe this picture almost certainly misleading, since the account was given by the older Donne, after he had been ordained; he may have wanted to separate, more cleanly than was possible, the younger man-about-town from the older clergyman. Walton tells us that Donne, after making a diligent study of theology, converted to Anglicanism at some point in the 1590s.
After taking part in Essex's military expeditions in 1596–7, he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, a prominent member of the royal court, but he fell in love with Egerton's niece, Anne More, and secretly married her. When More's father found out, he used his influence to get Donne and two of his friends—one who presided over the wedding, another who witnessed it—imprisoned, albeit briefly. Egerton fired Donne.
It was around this time that the two "Anniversaries," "An Anatomy of the World" (1611) and "Of the Progress of the Soul" (1612) were written; they reveal that his faith in the medieval order of things had been disrupted by the growing political, scientific, and philosophic doubt of the times.
When released from prison, Donne, reunited with his bride, settled on land owned by More's cousin in SurreyThis is about Surrey, England. There are also articles about other uses of the name Surrey. Surrey is a county in southern England, one of the Home Counties'. It is divided into a number of districts Elmbridge, Epsom and Ewell, Guildford, Mole Valley, Rei. The couple struggled with their finances until 1609, at which point Donne and his father-in-law reconciled and Donne finally received his wife's dowry. This must have been helpful, since, as Walton tells us, Anne "had yearly a child." His growing family prompted him to seek the favors of the King, and in 1610 and 1611, he wrote two anti-Catholic polemics. One of them was the 1611Events November 1 At Whitehall Palace in London, William Shakespeare's romantic comedy The Tempest is presented for the first time. mo Gustavus Adolphus becomes king of Sweden Denmark attacks Sweden King James Version of the Bible first published in Engla satire Ignatius his Conclave, which was probably the first English work to mention GalileoGalileo Galilei ( Pisa, February 15, 1564 Arcetri, January 8, 1642), was a Tuscan astronomer, philosopher, and physicist who is closely associated with the scientific revolution. His great achievements include perfecting the telescope, a variety of astron. King JamesJames VI of Scotland and I of England (Charles James) ( 19 June 1566 27 March 1625) was a King who ruled over England, Scotland and Ireland, and was the first Sovereign to reign in the three realms simultaneously. He ruled in Scotland as James VI from 24 was pleased with Donne's work, but refused to offer him anything but ecclesiasticalEcclesiastical means pertaining to the Church (especially Christianity) as an organized body of believers and clergy, with a stress on its juridical and institutional structure. Also see Ecclesiology. preferments. Donne resisted taking holy orders. After a long period of financial uncertainty and desperation, though, during which he was twice a member of Parliament (1601, 1614), Donne heeded the King's wishes and was ordained in 1615. With the death of his wife in 1617 the tone of his poetry deepened, particularly in the "Holy Sonnets".
After his ordination, Donne wrote a number of religious works, such as his Devotions (1624) and various sermons. Several of these sermons were published during his lifetime. Donne was also regarded as one of the most eloquent preachers of his day. In 1621, Donne was made dean of St. Paul's, a position he held until his death.
The story of Donne's death—as Walton tells it, at least—is justly well known. Suffering through the illness that would kill him only days later, in front of an audience many of whom, according to Walton, said that Donne seemed to be preaching his own funeral sermon, he gave an address called Death's Duel, one of the high points of seventeenth-century English prose. "We have a winding sheet in our mother's womb," he told his listeners, "which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seek a grave." He then retired to his quarters, and had a portrait made of himself in his funeral shroud. This portrait he placed near his bedside, where he meditated on it until his death.