John Donne’s Marriage Letters in the Folger Shakespeare Library

This is a complete facsimile edition of fourteen autograph letters of John Donne that are among the greatest treasures of the Folger Library. The letters, dating from February and March 1602, relate to Donne’s clandestine marriage to Anne More and are addressed to his father-in-law, Sir George More, and to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord keeper, who was also Donne’s employer. The text of a letter provides one part of the story, while its very tangibility – the ancient folds, the grime and fingerprints deposited by the writer, deliverer, and readers, the broken seals, the ink blots, the idiosyncratic spelling, the location of a signature – tells another. An understanding of a letter’s written and unwritten social signals brings into focus a fuller, grittier, and a clearer view of life in 17th century England. M. Thomas Hester is professor of English at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Robert Parker Sorlien is professor emeritus of English at the University of Rhode Island. Dennis Flynn is professor of English at Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts.