John Donne. Man of flesh and spirit

David L. Edwards

Though best known as a poet of love, John Donne was also a peerless writer of the spiritual journey, a stalwart churchman, and a great preacher. Yet behind this famed public face there also lived a lesser known and contradictory figure. Donne fascinates because he was a man battered by sex-and by God.
A compelling new portrait of John Donne emerges in this extraordinary biography. David Edwards ranges across all of Donne’s writings, including critically neglected sermons, using them to illuminate Donne’s life and vice versa. Itself a masterpiece of writing, this book challenges common views with wit and a critical compassion that does not fail to let Donne speak to readers in his own words. Edwards is not sentimental about Donne’s faults and limitations, and he does not try to sound superior to either the poet or the preacher. His aim is to give a living and accurate
account of a man who both suffered and gloried in his experience of flesh and spirit.

DAVID L. EDWARDS retired as Provost of Southwark Cathedral, London, in 1994. He was formerly a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Dean of King’s College, Cambridge, and a Canon of Westminster Abbey and the Speaker’s Chaplain in the House of Commons