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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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An Excerpt from the book-

Of all the great poets of the early nineteenth century--Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats--John Keats was the last born
and the first to die. The length of his life was not one-third that of
Wordsworth, who was born twenty-five years before him and outlived him
by twenty-nine. Yet before his tragic death at twenty-six Keats had
produced a body of poetry of such extraordinary power and promise that
the world has sometimes been tempted, in its regret for what he might
have done had he lived, to lose sight of the superlative merit of what
he actually accomplished.

The three years of his poetic career, during which he published three
small volumes of poetry, show a development at the same time rapid and
steady, and a gradual but complete abandonment of almost every fault and
weakness. It would probably be impossible, in the history of literature,
to find such another instance of the 'growth of a poet's mind'.

The last of these three volumes, which is here reprinted, was published
in 1820, when it 'had good success among the literary people and . . . a
moderate sale'. It contains the flower of his poetic production and is
perhaps, altogether, one of the most marvellous volumes ever issued from
the press.

But in spite of the maturity of Keats's work when he was twenty-five, he
had been in no sense a precocious child. Born in 1795 in the city of
London, the son of a livery-stable keeper, he was brought up amid
surroundings and influences by no means calculated to awaken poetic
genius.
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For many years one of the most serious needs in the literary world has been for a definitive edition of the letters of Keats. Now one of the world's foremost Keats authorities, Hyder Edward Rollins of Harvard, hasprepared a completely new edition of all the extant letters, with an extensive listing of the letters presumed missing.

With impeccable scholarship and total faithfulness to the originals, ProfessorRollins here is able to redate and rearrange sixty of the letters. Through full documentation for each letter, understanding of the content is considerably amplified both through the correction of errors, and through application of theresults of the editor's life-long study of Keats and his work. In addition to many letters from Keats' relatives and friends, the present work includes seven letters or other documents signed or written by Keats that appear in noEnglish edition, and also new texts of seven other letters by the poet. Furthermore, all the letters known only in Woodhouse's transcripts and in Jeffrey's transcripts are here printed for the first time exactly as Woodhouse and Jeffreycopied them.

The letters of Joseph Severn describing the last illness and death of Keats are given in their entirety. These letters are invaluable historically and biographically, and are alsoexceptionally good reading.

Customer Reviews (1)

The Letters of John Keats is worth reading in its entirety!
I've been searching for this out of print series for years.I was thrilled to receive it and to delve into the life of Keats once more.Be careful however, when ordering the two-volume set.Because you are technically ordering one item, you'll likely receive only the first volume.In my case, I received the first volume twice, and now I have none, because I have to send them back because there are no second volume mates for them at this time.This is not yet documented.Nonetheless, if
your order gets straightened out (crossing fingers), this is a unique collection and worth every word on the page.Happy hunting!I'll definitely continue my search.You may want to opt for a more recent compiled version to avoid this problem.In any case, once you get your hands on the book, it is incredible. ... Read more

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Mark Twain once famously said "there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past and can't be restored."  Well, over recent years, The British Library, working with Microsoft has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collection of 19th century books.

There are now 65,000  titles available  (that's an incredible 25 million pages) of material ranging from works by famous names such as  Dickens, Trollope and Hardy as well as many forgotten literary gems , all of which can now be printed on demand and purchased right here on Amazon.

Further information on The British Library and its digitisation programme can be found on The British Library website. ... Read more

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This book overturns received ideas about Keats as a poet of "beauty" and "sensuousness," highlighting the little studied political perspectives of his works. Roe sets out to recover the vivacious, pugnacious voices of Keats's poetry, and traces the complex ways in which his poems responded to and addressed their contemporary world. The book also offers new research about Keats's early life that opens valuable and often provocative new perspectives on his poetry. ... Read more

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Chickens coming home to roost : Explains how Detroit automakers made their mistakes a generation ago
Reading this is a special history lesson, and funny in a black humor vein.
Much of Detroit automaker's troubles today can be traced to the attitudes of the carmakers documented in this prescient book from 50 years ago. Not much has changed in Detroit attitudes towards the consumer.
Eerie references to the "You auto buy now" campaign of Eisenhower administration, government encouragement to buy cars to help the economy, shows bad ideas live on. the advice was not taken by Americans then and doesn't appear to be very persuasive now.
Many turns of phrase and ideas became famous, "Unsafe at any speed" spawned a whole consumer movement in the hands of Ralph Nader, forcing companies to improve their products. He also predicted the rise of the import market as Detroit focused on flashy marketing and foreign companies focused on making better cars
Well worth the read
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All 64 sonnets of one of the greatest English poets, John Keats, are collected here, from the first, which he wrote at age 18, to the last, written just five years later. Presented with an introduction and explanatory notes, the sonnets combine sensuous imagery with an eager voice full of passionate yearning. Keats's strongest feelings and his refined appreciation of nature and the rich world of his imagination find words and fulfillment in the abiding form of the sonnet. Some of the sonnets are written in play, some in seriousness; in some he experiments with form; and in others he is completely free within the form. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

beautiful book
This edition of Keats' sonnets is published beautifully; each poem is perfectly placed on the page with just the right amount of information to help the reader understand it.

Each poem is accompanied by a commentary
With an informative introduction by Edward Hirsh, this edition of John Keats' The 64 Sonnets will well serve to introduce a new generation of readers to the poetic genius of John Keats. It would also be an excellent replacement for shelf worn copies in personal, academic, and public library collections. Each poem is accompanied by a commentary providing context and background information on the sonnet. Nature withheld Cassandra in the Skies: Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies/For meet adornment a full thousand years;/She took their cream of beauty, fairest dyes,/And shaped and tinted her above all peers./Love meanwhile held her dearly with his wings,/And underneath their shadow charm'd her eyes/To such a richness, that the cloudy kings/Of high Olympus utter'd slavish sighs./When I beheld her on the earth descend,/My heart began to burn--and only pains,/They were my pleasures,/ they my sad life's end;/Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins.
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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Neither purely biography nor purely criticism, this book is an attempt to understand the essence of Keats by surveying the evolution of his inward life as revealed in his poems and letters during the four years of his poetic career. ... Read more

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Helen Vendler widens her exploration of lyric poetry with a new assessment of the six great odes of John Keats and in the process gives us, implicitly, a reading of Keats's whole career. She proposes that these poems, usually read separately, are imperfectly seen unless seen together--that they form a sequence in which Keats pursued a strict and profound inquiry into questions of language, philosophy, and aesthetics.

Vendler describes a Keats far more intellectually intent on creating an aesthetic, and on investigating poetic means, than we have yet seen, a Keats inquiring into the proper objects of worship for man, the process of soul making, the female Muse, the function of aesthetic reverie, and the ontological nature of the work of art. We see him questioning the admissibility of ancient mythology in a post Enlightenment art, the hierarchy of the arts, the role of the passions in art, and the rival claims of abstraction and representation. In formal terms, he investigates in the odes the appropriateness of various lyric structures. And in debating the value to poetry of the languages of personification, mythology, philosophical discourse, and trompe l'oeil description, Keats more and more clearly distinguishes the social role of lyric from those of painting, philosophy, or myth.

Like Vendler's previous work on Yeats, Stevens, and Herbert, this finely conceived volume suggests that lyric poetry is best understood when many forms of inquiry--thematic, linguistic, historical, psychological, and structural--are brought to bear on it at once.

Customer Reviews (3)

Vendler offers deepening insight into Keats' art & heart
After five years since I first studied this work on Keats' Odes (and after continual feasting on her "Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets"), I have returned to Vendler's volume to renewed appreciation of her respectful insight into Keats' creations and processes.The same respectfulness and confident humility that graces her Shakespeare criticism flourishes here - and warrants at least a brief expression of consensus with earlier laudatory reviews.

Most significantly for the lover of Keats, Vendler integrates the life and creativity of the seven or so months during which he produced odes that "belong to that group of works in whch the English language finds an ultimate embodiment."She makes explicit the implicit signs of connection among and growth through the Odes (and a key portion of Fall of Hyperion).Connections with Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton are interwoven skillfully -- as integral parts of Keats' context as were the works of nature and art that are explicitly addressed in the poems.

Vendler's work extends much deeper than I can fully follow, and some of it will leave all but English majors in the dust.Let's not let that discourage the rest of us amateur Keats enjoyers - the Introduction alone plus the initial discussion of each of the Odes contain indispensable caresses for the heart of mere mortals.

Insightful, Intriguing, Thought-Provoking Analysis
Helen Vendler has created a scholarly, insightful look at the odes of John Keats.The odes comprise about a dozen pages; Vendler's analysis is nearly 300 pages. She analyzes in thoughtful detail six classic odes of Keats, not in isolation, but by emphasizing their complex interrelationships. She argues that each poem reflects the odes preceding it and shaped the subsequent odes.As she states, "For the poet, the completion of one poem is the stimulus for the next; this is particularly true for poems of the same genre."

Not surprisingly, Vendler assumes that the reader is reasonably familiar with Keats' better known poetry (Hyperion, Endymion, and, of course, the Odes).As Spenser, Milton, and Wordsworth significantly influenced Keats, some familiarity with these poets is helpful. I found that Vendler requires attention and thought, but in return she provides insightful commentary that leads to a deeper appreciation of Keats' poetic genius.

On occasion Vendler's style becomes unnecessarily convoluted. But these instances are rare lapses; her writing is characterized by a clarity that is often absent in modern criticism.

She scrupulously credits ideas originating with others, explicitly identifies points of disagreement and differences in interpretation and in the process introduces the reader to a wide range of Keatsian studies. I gained a greater appreciation for modern literary criticism.I even enjoyed reading Vendler's detailed footnotes.

Exceptional examination of both the Odes and their creation.
Helen Vendler" The Odes of John Keats' gives the reader anopportunity to see how the six great odes written in 1819 came to be. Sheshows how the poems are linked together through words, images, and ideas,starting with the 'Ode to Psyche" and ending with the greatode"To Autumn." Through a close reading of each poem, anexamination of each image, and a view of the rhetorical trope, fromreduplication to enumeration, which underlies each poem, Vendler providesthe reader with a deep understanding of Keats's artistic concerns andmeanings.. She demonstrates why Keats' achievement is so extraordinary andprovides the critical reader with a method by which s/he may enter into themind of the poet. For any lover of Keats' poetry, and for any lover ofbelles lettres, this is a book which belongs in your library. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (9)

550+ Pages on Keats?Why Not!
I make a full confession of ignorance when it comes to the actual output of the German/English romantic poets of the late 18th and 19th centuries.

However,English romantic poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelly and Byron have a huge influence on how contemporary intellectuals- artists and writers both, see the role of the artist of in society.

I think it's fair to say that even those contemporary artists who are utterly ignorant of English poetry in the 19th century share most, if not all, of the attitudes of those artists when it comes to how they see themselves.They hate the business world, they don't like capitalism, they despise or ignore their critics, they are less concerned with making a living then making a statement.The romantic poets of 19th century England are kind of the ur-romantic intellectual/artistic figures, so I felt like I should check out this 500 page plus biography of John Keats- one of the more flamboyant figures in a posse characterized by flamboyance.

John Keats was called a "cockney" poet during his brief, unsuccessful life.In Motion's lengthy, lengthy book- one of literally dozens of biographies of this subject- Keats emerges like an 18th century analogue of the 20th century pop musicians who comes up "from the streets."For example, many 50s rock and rollers couldn't read music.Keats, who drew almost exclusively on Greek myths for his reference points, couldn't read Greek.Unlike many of the other romantic poets- Keats did not come from a privileged, wealthy background.The untimely death of both of his parents left him enough money so that he didn't have to actually work for a living, but he was hardly gallivanting around the globe Byron style.His one trip abroad- to Italy- resulted in his death (at the age of 25.)

One of the benefits of writing about Keats is that he wrote during a time when people wrote tons of letters and his work was discussed by contemporary critics.The superabundance of materials makes it easier to talk Keats in a contemporary context.One interesting aspect of Keats that emerges in Motion's biography is the relationship between Keats, his critics and his friends.When Keats was writing poetry, poetry was reviewed in much the same way albums and films are reviewed today.Critics had sharp opinions about the merit of specific poets and their output.Keats, as a member of the middle classes espousing an anti-government line, came in for harsh, harsh criticism.He read that criticism, and it totally bummed him out.At the same time, Keats also had a circle of friends who loved his work and when he met his untimely death they came out and crushed the haters.

Today, the contemporary critics of Keats sound like morons and his poetry is read by many an American undergraduate.You wonder if it would have been the same story if he had lived to 85.Again, Keats is an archetype of the "live fast die young famous forever" artist that has so much influence on the mind of artists working today.

In conclusion, I'd like to say that Keats life is wholly irrelevant to the work of artists and critics today, because he seems sorta ridiculous to me.However, it's impossible to ignore the fact that many of the tropes from this biography continue to repeat themselves down to the present day, and this makes Keats a pretty important dude, whether the artists and critics who unwittingly re-enact the episodes of his life in their own contemporary sparring know about him or not.

Useful but heavy-handed
This biography provides quite a lot of information about the later lives of Keat's friends and of his brother George.The portraits of his most of his friends are well-done, and important, since the poet was dependent on them for the constructive criticism he unfortunately never received from the press of his day.Motion perhaps over-emphasizes Keats' political liberalism but this focus helps to locate him in his day and get away from any lingering Victorian ideas of Keats as a poeticizing pet-lamb.

Yet to me this biography is not quite satisfying.The affectionate, humorous, spontaneous, brilliantly insightful man who wrote the astonishing letters, Lamia, and the Odes, does not quite come through.Motion's treatment of Keats's social insecurities is a bit heavy-handed; you begin to wonder how could have had the courage to open his mouth in company, let alone be a great conversationalist.

Jane Campion has said that this biography is the basis for her film about Keats and Fanny Brawne, Bright Star.I must say that Motion's treatment of their unhappy (at least for Keats) relationship lacks insight.The reputation of Miss Brawne has risen in the last 100 years until she has become almost a feminist heroine, as in Campion's dull movie.But I don't think this conventional and unimaginative girl ever took Keats seriously as a prospective husband.He was poor and his reputation as a poet was doubtful.Her mother had money, and they probably could have married if she had wanted. Fanny was clearly flattered by his attentions---Keats could write a torrid love-letter---but never gave him more than kisses and quite a lot of vexation.Outright rejection might have been more honest, and kinder.Motion attributes Keats's erotic despair to the fact that his mother (also named Fanny) left him as a child, then died when he was 14.Yes, but Keat's last letters to Fanny make for very painful reading.As with most young women of her time and place, she probably knew little about men, despite her apparent sophistication. She seems more like a young woman out of her emotional depth than anything else.

Aileen Ward's biography of Keats, The Making of a Poet, gives a better sense of Keats the man.It is out of print but can be found in libraries and probably on-line.That said, Motion's book is better written than the biography by Walter Bate and he clearly loves Keats and his poetry.

Superfluous Work by Author Seeing Politics Where There Are None
This is a thoroughly unnecessary biography by a hack writer who forces his opinions and perspective on to Keats's life. Keats was basically apolitical. Read his letters and poems and you find almost no politics. There are already three fine biographies on Keats, one a masterpiece of biography and literary criticism by W.J. Bate. Motion should be ashamed to have written this biography. Keats is the favorite poet of many people. This biography can't keep his genius and great work from emerging in its pages, though Motion tries his best to botch everything. This focus on Keats's politics is part of the almost thorougly discredited New History that treats context and fact as mere bowling pins to knock over. A disgraceful performance by Motion.

Not Light Reading
This is a book for a student of Keats to explore fine details about his life, poetry, friends, relationships, historical/political milieu, etc. It is a very long, thorough, and minutely researched book. That being said, I recommend it more as a reference than a book to be savored and enjoyed. As other reviewers have already stated (and very eloquently, I might add) the book is so heavy on detail as to be quite a weighty tome. Many of the details are not essential but help to make up the thoroughness of Motion's exploration of Keats. Having slogged through it and getting bogged down more than once by heavy details that I didn't feel were getting me any closer to knowing Keats, I felt terribly depressed by the book's end. I'm a fan of Keats, not a scholar, so I suppose I was hoping to gain new insight into his life and work that the book didn't really provide me with. The overwhelming detail, while certainly well-researched and therefore assumed to be factual, left me with a sense of despair over Keats' unfortunate life. I knew a good bit about him before tackling this book, but I was unprepared for just how sad his life was portrayed here. Poor Keats' life reads like a series of heartbreaks, disappointments, and sorrows caused by everything from disloyal and unsupportive friends and family members to bleak finances to his disastrous health. Keats' life and death make for a sad tale and a horribly depressing read, yet this book is an excellent reference for the student (or fan) of Keats who is willing (or desiring) to examine him in great, painful detail.

Good but not Definitive Bio of Keats
Considering how short the life of John Keats was, it still amazes me that his biographers are able to create such weighty tomes. Andrew Motion's take on Keats, while long, is very through and readable. Motion argues that Keats, if not overtly political as say Shelley, was a poet who did care about the world of power and politics and was not content with poems on nature, the role of the artist etc. It's an interesting argument and Motion makes a strong case. The chief weakness of the book is Motion's habit of straying a bit too far from Keats and focusing on his friends and acquaintances. Now in some cases that is fine (his take on Haydon on Hunt and their influence on Keats is superb) but the reader can be forgiven if he wants to skip paragraphs and even pages on friends and acquaintances of Keats who did little to shape his life or his work. If not quite up to the magnificent biography of Keats by Bates, Motion's book is very good and, with his different take on the tragic poet, useful, even needed. ... Read more

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This book is an examination of the poet Keats and his work. ... Read more