Edited: William Michael Rossetti (with a critical memoir).
Dimensions: 5.5 x 7.5 inches
Dates: There are no dates in this book at all. My best guess is 1930's given the colour of the paper as compared to other books I own from around that year.
Front Cover: Rust coloured background. "KEATS" in black lettering on a gold background across the top of the book.
A stem of flowers and leaves in varying colours of deep red, yellow, gold and green from the bottom right of cover to top left.
Bottom left says "Moxon's Standard Poets" in small black uppercase letters.
The spine is a reproduction of the cover, with "Moxon's Standard Poets" written across the stems of the flower.
Work of the principal of the Romantic movement of England received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day during his short life. He nevertheless posthumously immensely influenced poets, such as Alfred Tennyson. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize poetry, including a series of odes, masterpieces of Keats among the most popular poems in English literature. Most celebrated letters of Keats expound on his aesthetic theory of "negative capability."
John Keats is one of my all-time favorites. He positively enchants and ensnares me with his sensual and beautiful landscapes, enthralls me in his passionate descriptions of lovers entwined in Endymion (a lovely poem) and his odes are masterpieces, iconic and eternal.
I can't find my edition—an 1866 gilded leaf and leather-bound beauty—but the poetry is the same across editions, more or less.
Lovely small edition of his work, early poems, early sonnets, odes, his tour of Scotland, Teignmouth, faery songs and some of the usual suspects, To A Nightingale, Endymion, Lamia, The Eve of St Agnes, for example. Both versions of Hyperion are contained here. Endymion being the longest, it takes up about a third of the book.
However it is a good little pocket edition and there are poems/sonnets/songs that people won't know. Good introduction for those not familiar too.
This is the earliest copy of Keats’ poetry I could find on Goodreads, but the edition I read was from 1885. In any case, Keats’ writing is always beautiful. I enjoy his shorter works than the larger poems, though. In particular, my favourites are: • On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour • Ode to Autumn • Ode to Melancholy • To Kosciusko • Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil
He died too young. His grave is in Rome, in the "Cimitero Acatolico" (cemetary for non-Catholics), where he died, seeking to heal, of tuberculosis. "When I have fears that I may cease to be/ Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,/ Before high-piled books, in charact'ry/ Hold like full garners the full-ripen'd grain;/ When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,/ Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,/ And think that I may never live to trace/ Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;/ And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!/ That I shall never look upon thee more,/ Never have relish in the faery power/ Of unreflecting love!--then on the shore/ Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,/ Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink." (Sonnet XXIX)
Because I read Ode to a nightingale at school this was one of my first books of poetry i bought. It has all the poems in it, so it's hard to rate it. I've not read them all. But on first looking into Chapman's Homer made a lasting impression. As did the sequence of odes. I can still remember a lot of it today, which says a lot.Together with the Keats biography it made a great read.