The Complete Poems of John Keats by John Keats

The Complete Poems of John Keats by John Keats

'I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death, ' John Keats soberly prophesied in 1818 as he started writing the blankverse epic Hyperion. Today he endures as the archetypal Romantic genius who explored the limits of the imagination and celebrated the pleasures of the senses but suffered a tragic early death. Edmund Wilson counted him as 'one of the half dozen greatest English writers, ' and T. S. Eliot has paid tribute to the Shakespearean quality of Keats's greatness. Indeed, his work has survived better than that of any of his contemporaries the devaluation of Romantic poetry that began early in this century. This Modern Library edition contains all of Keats's magnificent verse: 'Lamia, ' 'Isabella, ' and 'The Eve of St. Agnes'; his sonnets and odes; the allegorical romance Endymion; and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho the Great. Presented as well are the famous posthumous and fugitive poems, including the fragmentary 'The Eve of Saint Mark' and the great 'La Belle Dame sans Merci, ' perhaps the most distinguished literary ballad in the language. 'No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perception of loveliness, ' said Matthew Arnold. 'In the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, in what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare.'

John Keats was born in Moorfields in October 1795, the son of a livery stable manager. His father died of TB in 1804 and his mother in 1810. He had gotten a good education at John Clarke's Enfield private school by that time. He began his professional training as an apprentice to a surgeon in 1811 and completed it at Guy's Hospital in 1816. His decision to devote himself to poetry rather than a medical profession was bold, based more on a personal challenge than any genuine achievement. Early Mends like Charles Cowden Clarke and J.

H.Reynolds, and he met Leigh Hunt, whose Examiner had already published Keats' first poem, in October 1816. Poems (1817) was published only seven months later. Despite the Hunt circle's great hopes, it was a flop. By the time Endymion was published in 1818, Keats' name had become synonymous with Hunt's Cockney School, and the Conservative Blackwood's Magazine attacked him as a lower-class vulgarian who had no right to aspire to 'poetry.'

Yet, Keats' fame was based on posterity rather than contemporary literary politics. His inspiration and challenge came from Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth. From his letters, it is clear that Keats matured at an incredible rate. He wrote The Eve of St Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, The Major Odes, Lamia, and the deeply exploratory Fall of Hyperion in 1819, after working on the magnificent epic fragment Hyperion in 1818.

Whilst preparing the 1820 book for the press, Keats was already ailing, and by the time it was published in July, he was very ill. In 1821, he died in Rome. Although Keats' final volume received considerable critical acclaim at the time, it wasn't until the later half of the nineteenth century that his place in English Romanticism became clear, and it wasn't until this century that it was fully realized.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780679601081
ISBN 10	0679601082
Title	The Complete Poems of John Keats
Author	John Keats
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	1994-04-26
Number of pages	416
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.