John Donne (/dʌn/ DUN; 1571 or 1572[a] – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a cleric in the Church of England.

These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques.

Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends.

[1] A few months after her husband died, Donne's mother married John Syminges, a wealthy widower with three children of his own.

[1] In 1593, five years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada and during the intermittent Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604), Queen Elizabeth issued the first English statute against sectarian dissent from the Church of England, titled "An Act for restraining Popish recusants".

It defined "Popish recusants" as those "convicted for not repairing to some Church, Chapel, or usual place of Common Prayer to hear Divine Service there, but forbearing the same contrary to the tenor of the laws and statutes heretofore made and provided in that behalf".

[12] Upon discovery, this wedding ruined Donne's career, getting him dismissed and put in Fleet Prison, along with the Church of England priest Samuel Brooke, who married them,[13] and his brother Christopher, who stood in, in the absence of George More, to give Anne away.

After his release, Donne had to accept a retired country life in a small house in Pyrford, Surrey, owned by Anne's cousin, Sir Francis Wooley, where they lived until the end of 1604.

[1][4] In spring 1605 they moved to another small house in Mitcham, Surrey, where he scraped a meagre living as a lawyer, while Anne Donne bore a new baby almost every year.

[15] In a state of despair that almost drove him to kill himself, Donne noted that the death of a child would mean one mouth fewer to feed, but he could not afford the burial expenses.

[17] Although King James was pleased with Donne's work, he refused to reinstate him at court and instead urged him to take holy orders.

[4] In 1621, Donne was made Dean of St Paul's, a leading and well-paid position in the Church of England, which he held until his death in 1631.

[9] Blunham Parish Church has an imposing stained glass window commemorating Donne, designed by Derek Hunt.

In late November and early December 1623 he suffered a nearly fatal illness, thought to be either typhus or a combination of a cold followed by a period of fever.

[1] During his convalescence he wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health, pain and sickness that were published as a book in 1624 under the title of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.

He was buried in old St Paul's Cathedral,[19] where a memorial statue of him by Nicholas Stone was erected with a Latin epigraph probably composed by himself.

His images of sickness, vomit, manure and plague reflected his strongly satiric view of a society populated by fools and knaves.

He argued that it was better to examine carefully one's religious convictions than blindly to follow any established tradition, for none would be saved at the Final Judgment, by claiming "A Harry, or a Martin taught [them] this.

"[23] Donne's early career was also notable for his erotic poetry, especially his elegies, in which he employed unconventional metaphors, such as a flea biting two lovers being compared to sex.

[11] One such, a previously unknown manuscript that is believed to be one of the largest contemporary collections of Donne's work (among that of others), was found at Melford Hall in November 2018.

[24] Some have speculated that Donne's numerous illnesses, financial strain and the deaths of his friends all contributed to the development of a more sombre and pious tone in his later poems.

Towards the end of his life Donne wrote works that challenged death, and the fear that it inspired in many, on the grounds of his belief that those who die are sent to Heaven to live eternally.

Dryden had written of Donne in 1693: "He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love.

One of the most famous of Donne's conceits is found in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" where he compares the apartness of two separated lovers to the working of the legs of a compass.

[15] Some scholars believe that Donne's literary works reflect the changing trends of his life, with love poetry and satires from his youth and religious sermons during his later years.

[35] In 1911, the young Stanley Spencer devoted a visionary painting to John Donne arriving in heaven (1911) which is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum.

His courtship of Anne More is the subject of Elizabeth Gray Vining's Take Heed of Loving Me: A novel about John Donne (1963)[46] and Maeve Haran's The Lady and the Poet (2010).

English treatments include Garry O'Connor's Death's Duel: a novel of John Donne (2015), which deals with the poet as a young man.

[48] He also plays a significant role in Christie Dickason's The Noble Assassin (2012), a novel based on the life of Donne's patron and (the author claims) his lover, Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford.

In 1916–18, the composer Hubert Parry set Donne's "Holy Sonnet 7" ("At the round earth's imagined corners") to music in his choral work, Songs of Farewell.