Author Description

This book is the first volume to be published in The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne, which presents the largest prose output of one of the most celebrated poets and preachers of the seventeenth century. The edition provides freshly edited texts arranged by place of delivery instead of (often speculative) chronology, and offers a wealth of explanatory material for specialist and non-specialist readers alike. Volume III contains the fourteen sermons preached by Donne at the court of Charles I, between the king's accession in 1625 and Donne's death in 1631. It includes the first sermon preached before Charles as king, and Donne's final sermon, known as Deaths Dvell. In each case an authoritative text has been established by freshly collating multiple copies of the seventeenth-century print editions. The introduction describes the institutional and physical context of Donne's Caroline court sermons and analyses his style of preaching and doctrinal positions. For the first time, the sermons appear with a full critical apparatus: headnotes to each sermon describe its textual state and supply local historical context and suggestions for further reading, while extensive commentaries trace Donne's use of his sources, translate passages in foreign languages, and gloss important and unfamiliar words.