The Struggles of a Sensitive Soul - Rated 
Biography remains one of the most challenging genres of historiography, requiring not only a talent for relentless research but also delicate psychological insight. However, psychological insight can easily be frustrated by the passage of time. The documentary trail (on which all history is reliant) becomes filled with gaps as we push back the centuries: as such the documents that do survive have to be mined for every tiny insight that can be gleaned from them, even if such insights are dependent on clumsy suppositions and ambiguous approximations.
Thus, the difficulties of writing a biography of John Donne become apparent. Here we have no convenient case study left by some proto-psychologist of the seventeenth century. We possess only some letters, his poetry, his sermons and the fractured reminiscences of obscure contemporaries. Each source has its own flaws: for instance, how much can a poem (a piece of fiction, often scribbled out for a client at court) tell us about the psychological state of its author or the circumstances of Donne's life? We can draw parallels between instances in the poems and the known biographical facts but these are nothing more than half guesses that can have no confirmation. This problem is only exacerbated when we take into account that so few of Donne's poems can be accurately dated. When it comes Donne's life and mind, all we can do is guess.
And guess John Stubbs does. However, these guesses are far from being stabs in the dark: he calculates and rationalises every move he makes. Stubbs goes to incredible lengths to set out the historical context: indeed this book is, in some ways, more about Donne's England that is about Donne himself. He then uses that context, along with creative exegesis of the poems and sermons, to suggest what Donne was doing and thinking at a particular moment. His readings of available source material are meticulous: he misses no detail, no hidden allusion, no subtle hint. Where no material by or about Donne exists, he uses works by contemporaries in similar situations to approximate what Donne may have been feeling. Stubbs also writes with verve, aplomb and wit: this book is a genuine pleasure to read. Thus, by the end of the book, a portrait of a man emerges, one that it is very similar to the famous painting of Donne: a life-like face emerges from the eminent shadows that continue to cloister much of the figure.
The other reviewers here have suggested that Stubbs either speculates too much or that he does not speculate enough. The simple truth is that Stubbs has no choice but to speculate, as my review makes clear. Not enough of the man has survived to make speculations redundant and Stubbs does not shy away from that fact: he realises that to do so would be to sacrifice too much to an unsustainable commitment to absolute historical veracity. At every turn he speculates but his speculations are not divorced from reality: there is at least a chance that his approximations may have been what Donne actually felt.
My only criticism is that there is nearly nothing written about the poems themselves: this is definitely a work of biography and not one of literary criticism.
To conclude, this is an admirable biography. Speculative it might be but given the source materials it could be nothing else. The book is a fascinating insight into early Stuart England seen through the prism of one of its most enduring poets.
But where's Donne the man? - Rated 
As someone familiar with Donne's early love poetry (Songs and Sonnets, Elegies) I read this both because I wanted to appreciate better the historical, political and social context in which he was writing; and because I wanted to understand how the man who wrote those erotic, flamboyant and colourful poems turned into the Dean of St Paul's. Stubbs does the first admirably, but I'm still left somewhat mystified about the second.
Another reviewer has commented here that Donne has basically quite a dull life: while I don't completely agree (he's a secret Catholic in a Protestant country; he joins Essex on military and almost pirate expeditions; he elopes and forms a secret marriage with the niece of his master/patron) I can completely see how this book leads one to that conclusion. It's almost as if Stubbs feels the need to play down the dramas in deference to who Donne is going to become: the dignified, respected, humane man who declares `no man is an island'.
Stubbs writes really well about late Elizabethan and Jacobean London, and the chapter on Donne's brother, Henry, is very moving and powerful but he's almost too cautious when it comes to interpreting Donne himself. I found it very difficult to get a sense of the man as a man, and the space between his two lives - the young wit about town vs. the respected churchman -never felt bridged to me.
It's not Stubbs' fault that we know practically nothing about Anne Moore, the girl for whom Donne sacrifices his career, but that absence feels very present in the text and practically ignoring the texture of their relationship both before, during and after marriage felt very strange. I'm not sure what the answer is given the lack of sources and primary evidence but I was still left feeling very unsatisfied. Stubbs falls back too often on the poetry, as if it is pure autobiography, as if imagination plays no role in literary production: I can read the poetry for myself, I was hoping for something more.
So overall this is a really good attempt at a life, but sadly its very rigour and refusal to speculate too far (an admirable quality and one not shared by too many other biographers) unfortunately renders the subject more lifeless than life-like.
Dull - Rated 
I was very disappointed with this book given some of the reviews given it, here and elsewhere. "Pedestrian" is the word used by another reviewer here, and it is well-suited.
I give a lower score because although it's research appears very good, there is no sense of the man. Given such an outburst of terrific works on Shakespeare recently, I hoped for a similar energy and enthusiasm in this work, especially given the publisher, and Jonathan Bate's write-up, but sadly, no.
Enjoyable with some reservations - Rated
This is a well-researched and enjoyable book. I am glad to have it as Donne is my favourite poet. However, I will agree with the other reviewers that Stubbs seems to speculate a little too much; for example a detailed description of crossing the Alps in Donne's lifetime without clear evidence that Donne travelled this way. Couldn't he have sailed to Italy? But that is very minor in the context of the whole. Essential for anyone with an interest in English literature and also useful if you are interested in the origins of the English Civil War.
Plus ca change - Rated 
Please, please read this book. It describes Donne's long journey from a catholic childhood to Dean of St Pauls.It shows the fragility of human life at the time but more importantly it demonstates the true value of history.
For Muslims in the early twenty first century read Roman Catholics in the early seventeenth. The extremes of both religions saw loyalty to their country as subordinate to their faith. Donne warns against the extremist Catholics who were prepared to sacrifice young mens' lives to advance thier faith -- his brother Henry died in prions having been caught up in a plot -- and counsels that nuances in religion were not worth the loss of a single life. He urges the Catholics to reconsider the more fossilised elements of their religion in the light of the changed and changing times. Who said history cannot teach us anything?
The only downside of the book is that it was written by a thirty year old!! As someone in their mid sixties, I wonder what I have done with my life!!
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