This volume-presented in the original spelling, with all its inconsistencies-reproduces the text of Poems by J.D. With Elegies on the Authors Death, published in 1633, two years after Donne's death. Very little of Donne's poetry had been published during his lifetime but it was much prized and many manuscript copies survive from the period, although only one is in the author's hand. This first edition of Poems by J.D. remains a monument and-unusually for posthumous publications of this kind-very little of the contents was not Donne's work, only two poems having been incorrectly attributed.
