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John Donne's Professional Lives.(Book Review)

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From: The Modern Language Review
Date: 20050101
Author:Davis, Alex

John Donne's Professional Lives. Ed. By DAVID COLCLOUGH. (Studies in Renaissance Literature) Cambridge: Brewer 2003 xiii + 272 pp. 45 [pounds sterling]; $75 ISBN 0-85991-1775-4.

The professional poet, making a living only from his writing, is a relatively new phenomenon, and rarer than one might think even today. Geoffrey Chaucer earned his living as a customs officer; Edmund Spenser was a colonial administrator and Christopher Marlowe, a spy; while John Donne, the subject of this volume, was by turns a secretary, a diplomatic aide, and Dean of St Paul's Are such facts of ...

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