Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, etc., Volume 2

Izaak WaltonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.2

Word count: 482K words
Chapters: 49

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, &c, Volume 2Author: Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Aug 8, 2004

Editor's review

This is the second volume of Izaak Walton's biographies of seventeenth-century Anglican clergymen, recounting in a plain, warm style the lives and spiritual character of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and others. Walton lived close to his subjects' era, and his accounts preserve much firsthand testimony and oral tradition, making these biographies both literary portraits and sidelights on seventeenth-century English religion, scholarship, and literary culture. The prose carries the rhythms of early modern English, with unhurried syntax and occasional archaisms, rewarding slow and careful reading. For readers studying Donne's poetry and sermons, Herbert's religious verse, or the tradition of English biographical writing, the book offers a primary text closer to the spirit of the age than modern secondary accounts. As a public-domain ebook, it is easy to search and collate against the original, and suits classroom selections as well.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying seventeenth-century English literature and religious history
Readers who love Donne's and Herbert's poetry and want to know their lives
Readers interested in the English biographical tradition and early modern prose
Teachers and students needing public-domain English primary texts for class reading

Not a good fit for

General readers seeking a modern Chinese translation or simplified biography
Readers unaccustomed to early modern English syntax and archaic spelling
Researchers expecting systematic source criticism and rigorous scholarly annotation

Reading tips

Read the Donne life first, then set it against his sermons or poems to see how biography and work illuminate each other.
With archaisms and long sentences, don't stop at every word; read through a paragraph to grasp the figure's outline, then return to details.
Read alongside an overview of seventeenth-century English religious history to fill in background figures and events.
As a public-domain electronic text, use search functions to check names and quotations and to keep reading notes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this a complete biography of Donne?

No. It is the second volume of Walton's several clerical biographies, and Donne is only one of the subjects, alongside Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and others; read together with the first volume for a fuller picture.

How difficult is the English, and what background is needed?

The original is seventeenth-century English prose: unhurried in syntax but rich in archaisms and long sentences, requiring good English reading ability. A grounding in English literary history helps; otherwise, begin with a modern introduction.

Is the electronic edition suitable for academic citation?

It can be used as a public-domain primary text, but this edition comes from Project Gutenberg and has limited editorial conventions and annotation. For formal academic citation, check page numbers against an authoritative edition and note the electronic source.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Izaak Walton Author · English · 1593–1683

Izaak Walton (1593–1683) was an English biographer. Born in Stafford, he ran a linen business in his early years and was closely associated with clergymen such as John Donne. In 1653 he published The Compleat Angler, a pastoral dialogue on the pleasures of fishing; revised and enlarged in later editions, it became a classic of English prose. The library also holds his multi-volume biographical works, including lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, and Herbert, later known collectively as Walton's Lives. Public information on the details of his life is limited, but his writings, combining leisurely tone with pious feeling, have influenced later English essays and biographical writing.