John Donne

First edition, first issue of Donne's Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, complete with the exceedingly scarce frontis portrait plate by Pieter Lombart and the first and last blank end leaves.

• John Donne (English).
• Letters to Severall Persons of Honour: Written by John Donne, Sometime Deane of St Pauls London. Published by John Donne Dr. of the Civill Law.
• London: Printed by J. Flesher, for Richard Marriot, 1651.
• (v)318pp.(i).
• Small quarto.
• Copy of Henry A. Sherwin, founder of the Sherwin-Williams Company, the world's largest paint and sulfa drug base manufacturer in 1866.
• Bound in contemporary full dark brown calf over cords, with gilt lettered red morocco spine label.

Published posthumously by the poet's son, John Donne (1604–1662), this collection contains 129 letters, written between December 1600 (a year before Donne's marriage to Anne More) and March 1631 (two months before his death). "In no other kind of conveyance, 'Donne once told Goodere,' can we find so perfect a Character of a man as in his Letters." These letters provide valuable information about Donne's situation and frame of mind at the time of the poems that many readers consider his greatest achievements.

Henry A. Sherwin