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Lead book review

A pure original: the inventive genius of John Donne

John Donne sounds like nobody else, and his poems invite us to feel that we might know him, says Daniel Swift

16 April 2022

9:00 AM

16 April 2022

9:00 AM

Super-infinite: The Transformations of John Donne Katherine Rundell

Faber, pp.344, 16.99

Perhaps it was all because of his name. John Donne: for a poet this must have felt a little like destiny, and even in the most unlikely of moments he couldn’t resist making puns. He sat down to write a letter to the enraged father of the teenage girl he had just married in secret.

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