John Donne

Janel Mueller is the William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor Emerita, Department of English and the College, The University of Chicago. She is the former editor of Modern Philology and the former dean of the Division of the Humanities at Chicago. She has published on a range of subjects in English Reformation and Renaissance literature, focusing particularly on the writings of Elizabeth I and Katherine Parr.

• IntroductionA Note on Editorial PracticesA Selective Chronology of Donne's LifeFROM THE WESTMORELAND MANUSCRIPT, PRE-1599 COMPOSITIONSSatires (Satyra)Elegies (Elegia)EpithalamiumVerse Letters to Male FriendsParadoxesEpigramsTo a Jet ring sent to meFROM THE BURLEY MANUSCRIPT, LETTERS CONCERNING HIS MARRIAGE (1602)THE FIRST AND SECOND ANNIVERSARIES (FIRST EDITION, 1612)To the Praise of the Dead, and the AnatomyThe First Anniversary. An Anatomie of the WorldA Funerall ElegieThe Harbinger to the ProgresThe Second Anniversarie. Of the Progres of the SouleFROM THE DOWDEN MANUSCRIPT, POEMS COMPOSED BEFORE THE END OF 1614ElegiesThe CalmeVerse Letters to Male FriendsVerse Letters to Noble LadiesLa CoronaHoly SonnetsThe CrosseThe AnnuntiationThe LitanyeGoodfriday. 1613. Riding towards WalesSongs and SonnetsAn Epithalamion or Maryage Song, on the Lady Elisabeth, and Frederick CountPalatine, beeing maryed on Saint Valentines dayEclogue. 1613. December 26EpithalamionObsequies to the Lord Harrington, Brother to the Countesse of BedfordFROM THE WESTMORELAND MANUSCRIPT, RELIGIOUS LYRICS (1607-1620)DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS (FIRST EDITION, 1624)

Janel Mueller's excellent edition is at once an accessible opening up of Donne's verse and prose for the modern reader, and a rich exploration of the material forms in which Donne's writing originally circulated. Mueller's generous notes, and a lightly modernised text, help readers with questions of genre, historical context, and biography, while facsimiles of manuscripts and printed editions, and discussions of early readers and later editorial responses, convey some of the latest research on the history of reading and of the material text.