George Parfitt 
John Donne [PDF ebook] 
A Literary Life

John Donne’s individuality has been heavily stressed in the twentieth century. This book recognises the individuality of Donne’s writing, but aims to relate this to the particular circumstances of his life and to the pressures of the period in which Donne lived. Both his poetry and his prose are seen less in purely aesthetic terms, therefore, than as products of a difficult life lived at a difficult time.