Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel

John Donne

Jan 2010 · Cosimo, Inc.

About this eBook

In addition to the writer's 1624 collection of meditations, debates with God, and prayers on the human condition-particularly earthly physical sickness and health-this volume contains the 1631 work "Death's Duel," a sermon said to be his own funeral oration, which he preached shortly before his own death. Readers of 17th-century literature, religious devotionals, and ponderers of human mortality are sure to find something profound in this fascinating, famous work. British metaphysical poet JOHN DONNE (1572-1631), renowned for his satires on English society, wrote this prose work in the latter part of his life, after he became an Anglican priest.

About the author

Poet and churchman John Donne was born in London in 1572. He attended both the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, but did not receive a degree from either university. He studied law at Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1592, and was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal, in 1598. He became an Anglican priest in 1615 and was appointed royal chaplain later that year. In 1621 he was named dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. Donne prepared for his own death by leaving his sickbed to deliver his own funeral sermon, "Death's Duel", and then returned home to have a portrait of himself made in his funeral shroud. He died in London on March 31, 1631.