POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS BY JOHN DONNE 1719 LEATHER BINDING

[DONNE, JOHN]. Poems on several occasions. Written by the Reverend John Donne, D. D. Late Dean of St. Paul's. With elegies on the author s death. To this edition is added, some account of the life of the author. London: printed for Jacob Tonson, and sold by William. Taylor, at the Ship in Pater-Noster-Row, 1719.

Sixth edition overall [first Tonson edition]. Leather-bound. Hardcover. Duodecimo (160 x 95 x 25 mm.). Pp. [24], 365, [3]. English text. Handsomely bound in later quarter calf. Spine gilt with morocco lettering-piece. Marbled boards. Decorated with woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials. 3 pages of advertisements at end. Condition: GOOD to VERY GOOD. Collates complete. Binding very well-preserved. Water staining for last 100pp becoming quite stained at the end of the book.

Notes: Rare sixth edition of Donne’s Poems, with an account of the author’s life and elegies on his death. "With Donne begins a new era in the history of the English love lyric, the full importance of which is not exhausted when one recognizes in Donne the source of the 'metaphysical' lyric" (Rosenbach). "Hardly an English poet of the first half of the 17th century was uninfluenced by some aspect of Donne's style with its dramatic openings, witty images, frequently colloquial tone, conversational rhythms, and awareness of variety in experience and in ideas" (An English Library, 120). "Few men can ever have had as much poetry within them as John Donne" (Baugh, 631). This sixth edition of Donne's verses (first collected for publication by his son in 1633) was the first to include a biography of the poet and preacher, based on Izaak Walton's famous account. "The 'Life' here printed is a condensation of Walton's life, which first appeared with the 1640 edition of the Sermons" (Keynes 85). CBEL I:441. OCEL I:103. See also: Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica 203; Lowndes, 660; Wither to Prior I:292.