Volume 3 of The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne is an impressive inaugural volume to an ambitious enterprise: a new critical edition of John Donne’s sermons. The question for users will be why a new edition, and why at this time. The Potter and Simpson California edition, completed in 1962, provided authoritative texts of Donne’s 160 extant sermons, and jump-started a scholarly trend that has seen sermons become a staple of historical and literary study. This first published volume of the Oxford edition, however, makes a strong case for a new edition. First, it offers expert analysis of sources and contexts for Donne’s Caroline court sermons, providing essays on Donne’s court chaplaincy, on the institutional settings within which court sermons were preached, on their formal qualities, and on Donne’s major sources. Colclough’s judicious overview of the historical turn in scholarship on Donne’s sermons, and its aftermath — the return to formal analysis — generates a rich discussion embracing theology, politics, biography, rhetorical decorum, and other features of language and style. Colclough is especially good on Donne’s religion and the decorum of its formal expression at court. Additional supporting materials comprise an appendix of passages from Charles I’s “Precedent Book” and “rules for attendance” at the royal chapel, a calendar of Donne’s Caroline sermons (1625–31), a biographical index, and an index to biblical citations. For each of the volume’s fourteen sermons, the edition provides exemplary textual and critical introductions and commentary, annotations and glosses of unfamiliar words and passages, identification of Donne’s sources, and translations of passages in foreign languages. In addition, sermon headnotes provide historical context and suggestions for further reading. The commentary, without exception, is informative, accurate, and in some cases (e.g., the inclusion of newly discovered notes on Donne’s sermons taken by Francis Russell) exciting and original.

The edition’s arrangement by preaching place rather than chronology, and its choice of copy texts closest to their preaching moment, will have lasting consequences for scholarly interpretation. Both decisions highlight current interest in how Donne adapted his sermons to meet the decorum of preaching to congregations in specific venues. Given the number of sermons undated by Potter and Simpson, the Oxford edition’s organizational method seems justified, especially since, with the inclusion of a calendar of Donne’s Caroline sermons, chronology is not lost, but recontextualized. One significant chronological innovation this volume makes is to redate Potter and Simpson 7.13 (a sermon on Isaiah 65:20) to 1623/24 rather than 1626/27. The earlier date is certainly plausible, and the reasons supporting the decision are well explained by the volume editor.

This edition’s policies regarding copy text will also be significant, especially for interpreting the differences between manuscript and printed versions of texts. Were these the consequence of authorial revision, or can they be attributed to Nicholas Langford of New College (401)? Even in this volume, for which no manuscripts survive, some issues raised by textual-editing policies emerge. The editors have collated more copies of printed artifacts than did Potter and Simpson, and with greater knowledge of the printing process (including the importance of typesetting and the process of correcting “formes” rather than leaves). While the editors have reported variants, however, readers must still rely on Potter and Simpson for full textual analysis and complete cross-referencing to other sermons, at least until Oxford’s Textual Companion — still a work in progress — is completed. How the completed Oxford edition will move beyond these practical, interim measures is not addressed.

The much-anticipated Textual Companion should also clarify issues involving emendations (and their reporting), definitions (of what constitutes a substantive variant, and thus qualifies for inclusion in the textual apparatus), and the reporting of accidentals. Colclough, for example, follows Potter and Simpson in adopting readings that are “demonstrably superior” (381) to his copy text, although such perceptions of superiority will undoubtedly alter over time. Colclough also notes that he has intervened in the text far less than did Potter and Simpson, although still using his judgment to make corrections that “make sense of a passage” (468). For sermons 10 and 11, where the choice is between texts with differing claims to accuracy, perhaps prepared for different purposes, editorial choice of the earlier form because it may retain signs of oral delivery and to eschew the later form because the changes may not be authorial but imposed by Nicholas Langford, leaves readers longing for the Textual Companion’s store of available textual materials.

These logistics notwithstanding, this volume under Colclough’s editorship represents an enormous achievement, and an outstanding contribution to Donne studies. In the interim, readers will require access to Potter and Simpson, and will lack some materials requisite for textual analysis, but when completed, The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne will prove foundational to Donne-sermon studies for the twenty-first century and beyond.