The Poems: John Keats

John Keats began writing at the age of 18, and by the time he died, seven years later in 1821, he had produced a substantial number of poems. This collection contains his work - his narratives, sonnets of discovery and his six odes - and culminates in "To Autumn". Despised by many contemporaries as a Cockney versifier, in our own time Keats has outstripped more famous colleagues in public esteem. While Byron and Shelley languish in the academy, Keats is now regarded as the quintessential English Romantic poet: lyrical, passionate, tender, dreamy, sensuous. The Eve of St Agnes, Hyperion and – above all – the five great Odes represent the pinnacle of poetic achievement in English. The Everyman edition of the poems presents a re-ordered and re-edited version of the complete text with detailed notes to every poem, plus chronology and bibliography.