John Donne was born in 1572 in London, England to a prosperous Catholic ironmonger and his wife, a member of Thomas More’s extended family. As this was the Elizabethan Age, those aspects that appear advantageous were, in fact, socially detrimental. No matter how prosperous, a merchant was still not a gentleman (a crucial element of social acceptance at the time); moreover, affiliation with the Protestant church (specifically Anglican, the Church of England) was paramount to good social standing in England, and being related (even distantly) to a Roman Catholic martyr was not just a social stigma but a reason for severe discrimination. Donne’s brother, Henry, was imprisoned for the felony of harboring a Catholic priest. He died of the plague within days of being incarcerated in Newgate Prison. Historians consider Henry’s death to be one of several determiners in John’s conversion to Anglicanism; Henry was a cautionary tale for those who showed sympathy for Catholicism, let alone practiced it. Despite Donne’s extensive education, military experience with the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh, and well-documented personal charm, he could not obtain social advancement. This also may have driven his conversion.

Scholars generally divide Donne’s life into two phases, and they base this division on his writing.