A manuscript of an early work by John Donne, a scurrilous academic joke that could have cost the poet his reputation – and maybe his head – if it had fallen into the wrong hands, has been discovered in trunk in the archives of Westminster Abbey. Daniel Starza Smith, of King’s College London, an expert on Donne who has examined the manuscript, said there really was a Justice Manwood, who might well not have appreciated the joke. Briefly jailed – he announced the news to his wife, pregnant with the first of their 12 children, as “John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done” – he was then scraping a living as a lawyer. Payne and Starza Smith will publish an essay on the find in a forthcoming issue of the Review of English Studies. “You’ll notice there is a scatological thread here too – all serious satire should have a good fart joke or two,” Starza Smith said.

Source: The Guardian November 03, 2017 14:26 UTC