FROM THE PUBLISHER

John Donne's enormous legacy to English literature is of equal significance in prose and poetry, in religious and secular writing. With popular knowledge of Donne mainly confined to his poetry, One Equall Light makes an important contribution by focusing on his prose writings which remain largely unknown. The book contains nearly one thousand extracts, some eight hundred of which are drawn from his sermons, letters, and other prose works. The anthology is preceded by introductory essays on Donne the man and his meaning for us today; on the distinctive characteristics of his writings as a poet, propagandist, and preacher; and on his final years as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral. It is in the anthology, however, that Donne speaks for himself. Twin themes run through this collection: humanity and divinity, the sacred and the secular, penetrating and informing each other in Donne's creative, restless imagination. In all his writings, his presence is inescapable, revealing something of what Rowan Williams in his foreword calls Donne's "wildly extravagant and often dark imagination."

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