John Donne

Born into a recusant Catholic family in 1571 or 1572, Donne came up as a scholar and soldier before his early poetry mapped English society with erotic charge and metaphysical conceits that bent European baroque into angular English. A secret marriage to Anne More — with whom he had twelve children — left him poor for years, dependent on wealthy friends despite his gifts. He sat in Parliament in 1601 and 1614, but in 1615 the king pushed him into Anglican orders against his will. Under royal patronage he rose to Dean of St Paul's in 1621, where he preached until his death in 1631, the paradoxe…