Abstract

This chapter presents the text of a lecture on John Donne's poetry given at the British Academy's 2009 Chatterton Lecture on History. This text analyses the claims made in H.J.C. Grierson's The Poems of John Donne that John Donne is a manuscript poet for the twentieth century and a poet of, and for, the new university discipline of English. It argues that subsequent understandings of Donne and his works, in manuscript and print, and by different audiences, are necessary elements of the poet we read today.