Super-Infinite

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2022.

A sparkling and very modern biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex, and death, shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and now in paperback.

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2022 A Sunday Times top ten bestseller

'Masterly.' - Observer
'Wonderful, joyous.' - Maggie O'Farrell
'Frankly brilliant.' - Sunday Times
'Unmissable.' - Simon Jenkins
'Every page sparkles.' - Claire Tomalin
'A triumph.' - Matt Haig
'Stylish, scholarly and gripping.' - Rose Tremain

John Donne lived myriad lives. Sometime religious outsider and social dis-aster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, Donne was incapable of being just one thing.

He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, a priest, the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral - and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language.

In Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell shows us the many sides of Donne's extraordinary life, his obsessions, his blazing words, and his tempestuous Elizabethan times - unveiling Donne as the most remarkable mind and as a lesson in living.

About the Author

Katherine Rundell is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where she works on Renaissance literature. Her bestselling books for children have been translated into more than thirty languages and have won multiple awards. Rundell is also the author of a book for adults, Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. She has written for, among others, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books and the New York Times, largely about books, though sometimes about animals, night climbing and tightrope walking.