Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne - Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2022

Description

Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. In his myriad lives he was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP - and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year old girl without her father's consent; struggled to feed a family of ten children; and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from black surges of misery, yet expressed in his verse many breathtaking impressions of electric joy and love.

Katherine Rundell grew up in London, Zimbabwe and Belgium. She is the youngest female scholar to be made a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her award-winning and bestselling books for children have been translated into thirty languages and have multiple awards. Rundell is also the author of a book for adults Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old And Wise. She is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books.