John Donne was an English Jacobean poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of that period. His works are highly notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry and religious poems. His poetry is also noted for its vibrant language and inventive metaphors, especially as compared to those of his contemporaries.
Born in London, England, in 1572, John Donne was the third of six children. His father, John Donne, a warden at the Ironmongers Company in the City of London was of Welsh descent,. Donne's father was also a respected Roman Catholic who avoided unwelcome government attention out of fear of being persecuted for his religious faith. Elizabeth Heywood, Donne's wife and the mother of his children, was left with the responsibility of raising their children when his father died suddenly in 1576. Despite the obvious and very real dangers, Donne's family arranged for his education by the Jesuits, which gave him a deep knowledge of his religion that equipped him for the ideological religious conflicts of his time. Donne's mother married again, to Dr. John Syminges, a wealthy widower with three children, a few months after Donne's father died. Sadly, his mother died, followed by two of his sisters, Mary and Katherine, in 1581. Before the future poet was ten years old he had experienced the deaths of four members of his immediate family, including both parents; this would greatly influence his work throughout his life.
Donne was a student at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford, from the age of 11and then, after three years at Oxford, he was admitted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for another three years. He was unable to obtain a degree from either institution because of his Catholicism, because he could not take the Oath of Supremacy required of graduates. His brother,Henry, was also a university student prior to his arrest in 1593 for harboring a Catholic priest. Henry Donne died of bubonic plague while in prison, which lead John Donne to begin questioning his Catholic faith.
During and after his education, records show that Donne spent much of his considerable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel. By the age of 25, however, he began the diplomatic career he appeared to be seeking. During the next four years he fell in love with Anne More, a girl of 17, though her age was rumored to be anywhere from 14-16, and they were secretly married in 1601, against the wishes of both families. This, in turn, ruined his career and earned him a short stay in Fleet Prison along with the priest who married them and the man who acted as a witness to the wedding. Donne was released when the marriage was proved valid, and soon able to secure the release of the other two. It was not until 1609 that Donne was reconciled with his father-in-law and received his wife's dowry.
Following his release, Donne had to accept a retired country life in Pyrford, Surrey and, over the next few years, he scraped a meager living as a lawyer, depending on his wife's cousin Sir Francis Wolly to house him, his wife and their children. This was a very generous gesture since Anne Donne had a baby almost every year. Though he practiced law and worked as an assistant pamphleteer, he was in a state of constant financial insecurity, with a growing family to provide for.
Anne bore him twelve children in sixteen years of marriage. The ten living were named Constance, John, George, Francis, Lucy, after Donne's patroness Lucy, Countess of Bedford, her godmother, Bridget, Mary, Nicholas, Margaret and Elizabeth. Francis, Nicholas and Mary died before they were ten. During this time Donne wrote, but did not publish, Biathanatos, his daring defense of suicide. On August 15, 1617 his beloved wife died five days after giving birth to their twelfth child, a still-born baby. Donne mourned her very deeply, including writing the 17th Holy Sonnet. He never remarried, which was quite unusual for the time, especially as he had a large family to bring up.
His works took on increasingly amounts of gloom and dark overtones. While Donne struggled through several different positions he never left his writing using it to fill the emotional void left by Anne's death and the struggling he viewed around him.
It is believed that stomach cancer was his final illness. He died on March 31, 1631, having never published a poem in his lifetime but having left a body of work fiercely engaged with the emotional and intellectual conflicts of his age. John Donne is buried in St Paul's, where a memorial statue of him was erected with a Latin epigraph that is believed to have been composed by him.