The Eve of St Agnes

'Hoodwink'd in faery fancy...' 
 
This volume contains a selection of Keats's greatest verse - including his gothic story in verse, 'The Eve of St Agnes', and the mysterious 'Lamia' - exploring themes of love, enchantment, myth and magic. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
John Keats (1795-1821). Keats's works available in Penguin Classics are Selected Poems, So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, The Complete Poems and Selected Letters.

Selected Letters

'I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination' - Keats, in a letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey in November 1817. 
 
In a period of great letter-writing, Keats's letters are outstanding. They begin in summer 1816, as he approached his twenty-first birthday, and were written over the next four years until his early death. Viewed together, they give the fullest and most poignant record we have of Keats's ambitions and hopes as a poet, his life as a literary man about town, his close relationship with his brothers and young sister, and, later, his passionate, jealous and frustrated love for Fanny Brawne. 
 
Keats enclosed many of his poems with his letters, and read together, they offer an incomparable insight into his creative process and development as a poet. This major new edition edited by Professor John Barnard includes an introduction and notes, as well as a map of Keats's Scottish walking tour and reproductions of his letters. 
 
John Keats was born in October 1795. His Poems appeared in 1817, while Endymion was published in 1818, both to mixed reviews. In 1819 he wrote The Eve of St Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, the major odes, Lamia and the Fall of Hyperion. Keats was already unwell when preparing his 1820 volume for the press; by the time it appeared in July he was desperately ill. He died in Rome in 1821, in a rented apartment next to the Spanish Steps, at the age of twenty-five. 
 
John Barnard is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Leeds and has edited The Complete Poems of Keats for Penguin Classics.

John Keats was born in October 1795. His Poems appeared in 1817, while Endymion was published in 1818, both to mixed reviews. In 1819 he wrote The Eve of St Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, the major odes, Lamia and the Fall of Hyperion. Keats was already unwell when preparing his 1820 volume for the press; by the time it appeared in July he was desperately ill. He died in Rome in 1821, in a rented apartment next to the Spanish Steps, at the age of twenty-five. 
 
John Barnard is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Leeds and has edited The Complete Poems of Keats for Penguin Classics.

So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne is a testament to the love that inspired the passion and creativity of one of the greatest English Romantic poets. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Jane Campion, Oscar-winning director of the film Bright Star. 
 
John Keats died aged just twenty-five, leaving behind some of the most exquisite and moving verse and love letters ever written, inspired by his great love for his neighbour, Fanny Brawne. Although they knew each other for just a few short years and spent a great deal of that time apart - separated by Keats's worsening illness, which forced a move abroad - Keats wrote again and again about and to his love, right until his very last poem, called simply 'To Fanny'. She, in turn, would wear the ring he had given her until her death. So Bright and Delicate contains the love poems and correspondence composed by Keats in the heat of his passion, and is a dazzling display of a talent cruelly cut short. 
 
John Keats (1795-1821) lost both his parents at an early age. His decision to commit himself to poetry, rather than follow a career in medicine, was a personal challenge, unfounded in any prior success. His first volume of poetry, published in 1817, was a critical and commercial failure. During his short life he received little recognition, and it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that his place in English Romanticism began to be understood, and not until this century that it became fully appreciated. 
 
If you enjoyed So Bright and Delicate, you might like Keats's Complete Poems, also available in Penguin Classics.

John Keats was born in October 1795. His Poems appeared in 1817. Endymion was published in 1818. In 1818 he also worked on the powerful epic fragment Hyperion, and in 1819 he wrote The Eve of St Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, the major odes, Lamia, and the deeply exploratory Fall of Hyperion. Keats was already unwell when preparing the 1820 volume for the press; by the time it appeared in July he was desperately ill. He died in Rome in 1821. Keats's final volume did receive some contemporary critical recognition, but it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that his place in English Romanticism began to be recognized, and not until this century that it became fully recognized.

Published to coincide with the release of the film Bright Star, written and directed by Oscar Winner Jane Campion (The Piano, In the Cut), starring Abbie Cornish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) and Ben Whishaw (Brideshead Revisited, Perfume) 
 
John Keats died aged just twenty-five. He left behind some of the most exquisite and moving verse and love letters ever written, inspired by his great love for Fanny Brawne. Although they knew each other for just a few short years and spent a great deal of that time apart - separated by Keats' worsening illness, which forced a move abroad - Keats wrote again and again about and to his love, right until his very last poem, called simply 'To Fanny'. She, in turn, would wear the ring he had given her until her death. So Bright and Delicate is the passionate, heartrending story of this tragic affair, told through the private notes and public art of a great poet.

The Complete Poems and Selected Letters

Bright Star

'O soft embalmer of the still midnight,/ Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,/ Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, / Enshaded in forgetfulness divine' John Keats, 'Ode to Sleep'

Littered with sensuous descriptions of nature's beauty, Keats's odes also pose profound philosophical questions

In what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare...no-one else in English poetry has...his perception of loveliness

One of the half-dozen greatest English writers

His letters are certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet

Astounding, contemporary-seeming brilliance and deep wisdom about writers and writing

John Keats was born in London in 1795. He trained as a surgeon and apothecary but quickly abandoned this profession for poetry. 
 
His first volume of poetry was published in 1817, soon after he had begun an influential friendship with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. His first collection and the subsequent long poem Endymion recieved mixed reviews, and sales were poor. 
 
In late 1818 he moved to Hampstead where he met and fell deeply in love with his neighbour Fanny Brawne. During the following year Keats wrote some of his most famous works, including 'The Eve of St. Agnes', 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'. 
 
He was however increasingly plagued by ill-health and financial troubles, which led him to break off his engagement to Fanny. Soon after the publication of Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems in 1820, Keats left England for Italy in the hope that the climate would improve his health. But Keats was by this time suffering from advanced tuberculosis, and he died on February 23rd 1821. 
 
On his request, Keats' tombstone reads only 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DIRECTOR JANE CAMPION 
 
John Keats died in penury and relative obscurity in 1821, aged only 25. He is now seen as one of the greatest English poets and a genius of the Romantic age. This collection, which contains all his most memorable works and a selection of his letters, is a feast for the senses, displaying Keats' gift for gorgeous imagery and sensuous language, his passionate devotion to beauty, as well as some of the most moving love poetry ever written.

Poems of John Keats

John Keats (1795-1821) is one of the greatest English poets and a key figure in the Romantic Movement. He has become the epitome of the young, beautiful, doomed poet. He wrote, among others, 'The Eve of St Agnes', 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'To Autumn'. 
 
Claire Tomalin was born in London in 1933. She has worked in publishing and journalism all her life, becoming literary editor first of the New Statesman and then of the Sunday Times, which she left in 1986. She is the author of, among other books, the extraordinarily successful biography of Samuel Pepys.

Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity. By the end of his brief career, he had written poems of such beauty, imagination and generosity of spirit, that he had - unwittingly - fulfilled his wish that he should 'be among the English poets after my death'. This new, wide-ranging selection of Keats's poetry has been selected by Claire Tomalin.

Selected Poems: Keats

John Keats's rich and inventive poetry is among the loveliest and most profound in the English language

John Keats was born in October 1795. In October 1816 he met Leigh Hunt, whose Examiner had already published Keats&rsquo;s first poem. Only seven months later Poems (1817) appeared. The extraordinary speed with which Keats matured is evident from his letters. In 1818 he had worked on the powerful epic fragment Hyperion, and in 1819 he wrote &lsquo;The Eve of St Agnes&rsquo;, &lsquo;La Belle Dame sans Merci&rsquo;, the major odes, Lamia, and the deeply exploratory Fall of Hyperion. Keats was already unwell when preparing the 1820 volume for the press; by the time it appeared in July he was desperately ill. He died in Rome in 1821. 
 
 
Edited with an introduction and notes by John Barnard.

Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity. By the end of his brief career, he had written poems of such beauty, imagination and generosity of spirit, that he had - unwittingly - fulfilled his wish that he should &lsquo;be among the English poets after my death&rsquo;. This wide-ranging selection of Keats&rsquo;s poetry contains youthful verse, such as his earliest known poem &lsquo;Imitation of Spenser&rsquo;; poems from his celebrated collection of 1820 - including &lsquo;Lamia&rsquo;, &lsquo;Isabella&rsquo;, &lsquo;The Eve of St Agnes&rsquo;, &lsquo;Ode to a Nightingale&rsquo; and &lsquo;Hyperion&rsquo; - and later celebrated works such as &lsquo;La Belle Dame sans Merci&rsquo;. Also included are many poems considered by Keats to be lesser work, but which illustrate his more earthy, playful side and superb ear for everyday language.

John Keats

In the summer of 1820, Keats published this collection, his third and final volume of poetry. A few months earlier, he had started coughing up blood; the following February, he would die of tuberculosis in Rome, aged just twenty-five. This volume contains his greatest work, written in an astonishing burst of creative genius in 1819. It includes 'Lamia', his tale of love and betrayal in ancient Corinth; the haunting medieval romance of 'The Eve of St Agnes'; and his six famous odes, now considered among the most famous verse in the language.

Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems

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