by John Donne
Selected and introduced by Helen Gardner
Reader in Renaissance English Literature in the University of Oxford
Readers:
Robert Harris and Gary Watson
Helen Gardner writes: 'I suppose no poems, except Mr. T. S. Eliot 's, have been more talked about and explicated in the last forty years than the fifty-four lyrics by Donne that we call the Songs and Sonets. . . This is not a critical talk or a talk on literary history but a recital of poems by a great artist, one of the most original writers of lyric poetry in our language.'
(: second broadcast)