Super-Infinite

With this mesmerising biography, author Katherine Rundell sets out to share her deep love of the poet John Donne and succeeds in style. This is an enthralling book—an insight into a clever, fascinating man who led myriad lives as a poet, scholar, sea adventurer, and Dean of St Paul’s.

Rundell’s appreciation of Donne’s way with words is insightful. Aptly, her own prose is itself rich and imaginative. She has a flair for arresting images: ‘To read a full text of a Donne sermon is a bit like mounting a horse only to discover that it is an elephant: large and… show more.

A masterclass in fusing together biography with an analysis of Donne’s poetry and the mores of the period. I am not so good on poetry, but this completely won me over.

The writing is superb, the character of John Donne is conveyed with the minimum of effort, and the development and significance of the verse could not be bettered.

It is comparatively short, but what is packed into these pages is nothing short of astonishing – not least Katherine Rundell’s summing up of Donne’s marriage, considered one of the great love affairs to have been put into poetry.