Читать книгу Letters to Severall Persons of Honour - Donne John - Страница 1

The Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, now for the first time reprinted in their original form, were collected and published by John Donne, Jr., in 1651, twenty years after the death of the author. Apparently the sales were not large, for three years later the original sheets were rebound with a new title page and put on the market as a second edition. Not many copies of the earlier, and still fewer of the later date, have come down to us.

In the present volume changes from and additions to the original text are indicated by brackets, with a single exception: errors in punctuation have been corrected without comment when, and only when, they seem seriously to impair the intelligibility of the text. In the case of a few letters the reading followed is that of the original manuscripts, for which I am indebted to the great kindness of Mr. Edmund Gosse.

Readers of Mr. Gosse’s brilliant study, The Life and Letters of John Donne (London: Heinemann, 1899) will not need to be reminded of the obligations under which he has placed all later students of Donne’s life and work. I have, in addition, to thank him for generous encouragement and for many helpful suggestions, specific and general.

C. E. M., Jr.

Huntington, Long Island

October 14, 1910.