Poems, &c. With Elegies on the Author s Death. To which is added Divers Copies under his own hand, Never before Printed.

DONNE, JOHN.

Published by In the Savoy: Printed by T.N. for Henry Herringman, 1669.

About this Item

[vi], 414pp., 8vo. Without the initial and terminal blank leaves as usual, a few headlines shaved. A handsome copy in full gilt-panelled black morocco, spine richly gilt, g.e., by Bernard Middleton. Fifth edition (not so stated), adding for the first time Donne s incomparable elegy "To his Mistress going to bed," and four other poems, two of them spurious. According to one of his friends, Donne wrote "all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old." These are his "Songs and Sonets" which begin the book, and if some would argue that Shakespeare in his sonnets is the greatest of all love-poets, surely there can be no argument that Donne is the unequalled poet of requited love, a realm only occasionally visited by Shakespeare, and notably ignored by most subsequent poets writing in English. The bulk of the present collection was originally published in 1633, two years after Donne s death, and although there were a handful of subsequent editions, Donne s reputation was eclipsed in the later seventeenth century by imitators such as Abraham Cowley. Only in the late nineteenth century did Donne s light begin to shine again, and more than a century later it has grown only brighter. Wing D1871; Keynes, John Donne, 84. Seller Inventory # 13555

Bibliographic Details

Title: Poems, &c. With Elegies on the Author s ...

Publisher: In the Savoy: Printed by T.N. for Henry Herringman, 1669.

Binding: Hardcover