John Donne: The Reformed Soul

I've spent a lot of time with Donne's poetry, and even in my youth researched his love affair with his wife, but I never understood the man and his relationship with his time, his loves, his kings and queen, and the church, until this meticulously researched and written biography. With grace and clarity, using a remarkable range of sources, John Stubbs has created a vivid life of a gifted writer who can still teach us much about married love and our shared humanity. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I am somewhat surprised by the negative reviews. I found this to be a wonderfully entertaining book that captures not only the spirit of the man but the spirit of the times. Stubbs writes in a style that entertains while colorfully bringing the characters surrounding Donne in Elizabethan London into focus. I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone with a sincere interest in the Elizabethan period. Donne comes across as a man who went through several distinct and unique phases in his life which enriched his writing and makes him a very interesting character study.

Biography can be so tedious and boring but I think we have entered into an age of the Biography as art form. And I feel the Donne by Stubbs is a fresh example of the new biographers who are grounded not only in the material but also in writing skillfully enough to keep the reader entranced. When I think John Donne I think Milton and Spencer and I think of boring school days and relentless English courses. Stubbs does us a great service in bringing Donne back to life. Some found this book repetitive but I feel the repetitiveness serves the purpose well here as it weaves a tapestry of a rich life fully lived. And given the difficulty of the topic reminds the reader of previous territory covered. Stubbs should win some awards for this sterling bio. If this be his first let this not be his last!

The complex life of a former rake, politico, and then dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. And, above all, a master of the written word. The author of this biography writes in a lively style that does credit to his subject. I do not usually think "Afterwords" are justified. In this case, this device provides for a nicely done close, with its linkage between Dr. Donne and our age's great physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer. (Dr. Donne's words still speak to our largely unchanged human condition.) By a young scholar, John Stubbs. This is an excellent first book.

Each human being has at different stages of life, and in different social settings alternate personalities and selves- raising then the question of how all this diversity be one person only. If this is true for Everyman how much more so for one so brilliant diverse contradictory and paradoxical in mind as the passionate metaphysical poet preacher lover soldier Anglican divine John Donne- who at his life's outset was faithful Catholic and and in his final years High Anglican Church preacher- who was in his youth swashbuckling philandering soldier with the Earl of Essex in Cadiz and later on country husband exiled with his young wife and condemned to scribbling verses for a living- who at one point seemed to be climbing the greasy career pole only to throw it all away for love of the fifteen year old girl Ann More who would become the mother of his twelve children five of whom would die in their early years and who would herself die before the age of thirty leaving him alone and nowhere until he at last submitted to his friends' injunctions took Holy Orders and became the Dean of St. Pauls and in the last years of his life one of the leading figures of England a preacher of incredible attractiveness and power whose sermons are themselves great works of art. Stubbs masterfully guides the reader through the long intricate and often surprising career of the master metaphysical poet who in violent conjunction linked diverse worlds together. He argues that Donne was a courageous and principled figure one who met the many challenges of life in a memorable and largely humane way. Stubbs sees Donne as a figure of ironic compassion, of intricate humor of vast intelligence. He does not spend his time on close reading the poems but instead focuses on the fantastic life of one of England's greatest literary figures.