DONNE, John (1572-1631)

Lot 93
09.07.2025 10:30UTC +01:00
Classic
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
Buyer Premiumsee on Website%
ID 1450416
Lot 93 | DONNE, John (1572-1631)
Estimate value
£ 4 000 – 6 000
DONNE, John (1572-1631)
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes. London: Printed by A[ugustine]. M[athewes] for Thomas Jones, 1624.
Second edition, published the same year as the first, of the work which introduced two of Donne’s most powerful and enduring lines: ‘No man is an I[s]land, intire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the maine’ and ‘therefore never send to know for whom the bell tols; It tols for thee’. Written as Donne recovered from a life-threatening illness, Devotions consists of twenty-three Meditations, Expostulations, and Prayers, which chart his spiritual journey from fear and isolation to acceptance and renewed faith. ESTC S1877; Keynes 36.

12mo (133 x 77mm). Type-ornament headpiece, woodcut initial (title and A3 restored in margins, small repaired wormhole in first quire, B4 restored at lower margin just into ruled border, repaired tear into text at foot of O1, lacking first blank). 19th-century speckled calf, spine gilt (extremities lightly rubbed). Provenance: engraved armorial bookplate with motto 'Soyes sage et simple' (possibly that of Dr John Hume Spry, 1778-1854) – Edmund Philips (armorial bookplate) – Sir Brent Gration-Maxfield (1916-1983; ownership inscription on endpaper dated 1965, his sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 9-10 Feb. 1981, lot 84).
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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