About this title: The life of Keats provides a unique opportunity for the study of literary greatness and of what permits or encourages its development. Its interest is deeply human and moral, in the most capacious sense of the words. In this authoritative biography--the first full-length life of Keats in almost forty years--the man and the poet are portrayed with rare insight and sympathy. In spite of a scarcity of factual data for his early years, the materials for Keats's life are nevertheless unusually full. Since most of his early poetry has survived, his artistic development can be observed more closely ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. 8vo. Reprint of a classic literary biogaphy. Illustrated. 732pp. Slight crease to upper rear cover at corner. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: The Hogarth Press Ltd
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9780701209865ISBN:0701209860
Description: Acceptable. Minor Shelfware. Previous owners name inside front page. Used. Creasing to the cover and spine of the book. Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. read more
Description: Acceptable. Ships from the UK. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Your purchase also supports literacy charities. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date Published: 1966
Description: Hardback, ex-library, with usual stamps and markings, in fair all round condition suitable as a reading copy. Ships within 24 hours., 850grams, ISBN: read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard University
Date Published: 1964
Description: Good. Tight copy and clean text. jacket has tears at the top and bottom of jacket. Book leans a little to the right from being in a box. No marks hardback. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: BELKNAP
Date Published: 1964
Description: Published by Belknap in 1964. Hardback with Dust jacket. Condition: Good. Used book but in Good Condition for sensible price. Shipped from UK. Delivery is usually 2-3 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail. read more
"At seven-hundred pages, W. Jackson Bate's biography of John Keats provides a thorough, if sometimes repetitive, account of the poet's life and mind. For the repetition, the author apologizes in advance, offering by way of explanation that "Keats's development naturally circles and eddies" (x). Thus, certain letters or poems that express key ideas continue to be relevant in each new context and need to be cited again and again as the chronology moves forward. While this explanation is reasonable enough, the need to offer it suggests what my own experience confirms: that the reading drags a bit from time to time. Readers looking for a brisker narrative of the events of Keats's life might want to read Robert Gittings' biography instead (Helen Vendler's recommendation). Still, there is something to be said for taking the slow route: namely, that one has so much more time to let the important ideas sink in. After seven-hundred pages in Dr. Bate's company, I am left with the sense of having taken a semester-long class with a professor whose thorough knowledge of the material leaves me confident that I'm walking away with something solid. Such professors seem always to have their quirks (Bate's is a quaint need to insist, again and again, that Keats is a tougher, more "masculine" poet than his Victorian successors would have us believe), but these prove more charming than annoying. In the end, Bate is more of a scholar than a storyteller, better at mapping the shifts in Keats's prosody than painting pretty pictures of Hampstead. But, speaking as one more interested in Keats the poet than Keats the posthumous celebrity, I would not have it otherwise; I am much happier to have the portrait of the man's mind than that of his environs.
(There is a second paragraph to this review, but it exceeds the publishable limits of the Goodreads server. I've posted it as a comment on this review.)"
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