![]() ![]() ![]() George Herbert, having nothing like Donne’s apprehensions about his remaining manuscripts, still kept them private throughout his career. And Donne left specific instructions with regards to a manuscript of his own, Biathanatos, which may have been a defense of suicide, that when he died, it neither be burned nor printed, and was similarly anxious about the fate of his secular poems, many of which we know to be erotic. During Herbert’s time, the attitude of some to prefer to keep their writings from being printed was considered “the snobbery of manuscript.” Herbert’s poetry, like that of his older friend John Donne, did not see publication until after he died. Toward the end of his thoughtful new critical biography of the great seventeenth-century English poet George Herbert, John Drury considers the literary legacy of Herbert and the necessity of publication. Writing for God: The Life and Work of George Herbert ![]()
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