'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
Autorentext
Lucasta Miller
Klappentext
*A BOOK TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2021 IN THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, DAILY MAIL, SUNDAY TIMES AND GUARDIAN*
The epitaph John Keats composed for his own gravestone - 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water' - seemingly damned him to oblivion. When he died at the age of twenty-five, having taken a battering from the conservative press, few critics imagined he would be considered one of the great English poets two hundred years later, though he himself had an inkling.
In this brief life, Lucasta Miller takes Keats's best-known poems - the ones you are most likely to have read - and excavates their backstories. In doing so, she resurrects the real Keats: a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and dysfunctional family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression; a human being who delighted in the sensation of the moment; but a complex individual, not the ethereal figure of his posthumous myth.
Combining close-up readings of his writings with the story of his brief but teeming existence, Lucasta Miller shows us how Keats made his poetry, and explains why it retains its vertiginous originality and continues to speak to us across the generations.