John Donne

Topic: John Donne

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• Michelle O’Callaghan writes:

“The core of the ‘Sireniacs’ appears to have been John Donne, and the MPs Richard Martin, John Hoskyns, William Hakewill, and Christopher Brooke.”

• The same article states:

“Brooke’s close lifelong friendship with Donne began when Donne entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1592.”

• O’Callaghan’s description of the Convivium Philosophicum attendee list includes:

“John Donne”

• The Middle Temple article states that the literary community of the Inns included:

“the poet (and later Dean of St Paul’s) John Donne”

• The same article notes that this later circle intersected with:

“the ‘Mitre’ and ‘Mermaid’ taverns, near the Temple”

• Source-hardening check of the local Middle Temple PDF shows that this is not just a loose Donne association. Jessica Winston frames the Inns-centred 1610s literary circle as part of a broader intellectual and political community around the Temple, Mitre, and Mermaid, including Donne, Brooke, Wither, Inigo Jones, Thomas Coryate, Lionel Cranfield, and Sir Henry Goodere.

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• No Ken Feinstein Twitter/blog material is isolated in this packet at present.

3. Quoted Source Text

O’Callaghan

• “The core of the ‘Sireniacs’ appears to have been John Donne”
• “Brooke’s close lifelong friendship with Donne began when Donne entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1592.”
• “John Donne”

Middle Temple article

• “the poet (and later Dean of St Paul’s) John Donne”
• “‘Mitre’ and ‘Mermaid’ taverns, near the Temple”
• “broader intellectual and political community”

4. Citations

• O’Callaghan, Michelle. “‘Talking Politics’: Tyranny, Parliament, and Christopher Brooke’s The Ghost of Richard the Third (1614).” The Historical Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, 1998, pp. 97-120. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2640146. Local PDF: GhostRichard.pdf.
• Winston, Jessica. “Literary Associations of the Middle Temple.” In Middle Temple Lawyers and the Law, edited by Richard O. Havery. Local PDF: Literary_Associations_of_the_Middle_Tem.pdf.

5. Notes on Access

• This is a starter packet for Donne’s place in the Sireniac and Inns-of-Court network around Neville.
• It does not yet attempt a general Donne biography or a full Donne/Neville dossier.
• Source-hardening result, 2026-04-27: the Middle Temple PDF should be cited as Jessica Winston's chapter, not as Wilfrid Prest's monograph.