Description
‘Outstanding… The best short introduction I have come across’ Sunday Times
When he died at the age of just twenty-five, few imagined John Keats would one day be considered among the greatest poets of all time.
Taking nine of Keats’s best-known poems, Lucasta Miller excavates their backstories and, in doing so, resurrects the real Keats: an outsider from a damaged family whose visceral love of language allowed him to change the face of English literature for ever.
Combining close-up readings with the story of his brief existence, Miller shows us how Keats crafted his groundbreaking poetry and explains why it continues to speak to us across the centuries.
‘One never wants Keats’s life to end so soon; I didn’t want this book to end, either’ TLS Books of the Year
‘Irresistible… [Miller]digs into the backstories of her subject’s most famous poems to uncover aspects of his life and work that challenge well-worn romantic myths’ Wall Street Journal







A Quarter of an Hour
A Cowfoot: 18 Stolen Sonnets
River Lane
The 'White City'
Spiritlands
Playing House
Let Us Compare Mythologies
The Quiet Music of Gently Falling Snow
A Shropshire Lad
The Tamarit Poems
Selected Poetry
Gold from the Stone
Words the Turtle Taught Me
Pretend You Don't Know Me
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Being Alive