Books

Full Description: KEATS, John. Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey, 1820. First edition. Twelvemo (6 1/8 x 3 3/4 inches; 155 x 97 mm). [vi], 199, [1, printer's imprint] pp. Bound without the half-title or the ads at the rear. With the publisher's advertisement leaf at the front, bound after the title-page. Late nineteenth-century full red morocco. Boards ruled and stamped in gilt. Spine lettered and stamped in gilt. Board edges tooled in gilt. Gilt dentelles. Watered green silk paste-downs and free endpapers. All edges gilt. A minor crack to bottom outer hinge. Some minor foxing but generally very clean. Overall a very good, attractive copy. Housed in a red cloth slipcase. Slipcase with some rubbing and soiling. First edition of the poet's third and last book. Taylor and Hessey originally planned to issue the last of Keats's poems in five separate pamphlets at a half-crown each but quickly realized that it was eminently more salable as a volume of poems at 7s. 6d. On 24 June publisher John Taylor wrote his father that "Next week Keats's new Volume of poems will be published, and if it does not sell well, I think nothing will ever sell again." "I am sure of this for poetic Genius there is not his equal living, & I would compare him against any one with either Milton or Shakespeare for Beauties." The book resonates with not only the notable three poems mentioned in the title, but also with the unfinished epic "Hyperion" and three of the four great odes: "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on Melancholy," and "Ode on a Grecian Urn." For the first time, critical acclaim of Keats's poems was not limited to his small circle of friends. "The reviewers were won over... all to a measure of admiration, and without any dispiriting delays," wrote Keats's biographer Robert Gittings, and that "Keats had at last the consolation of being fully reviewed, recognized, praised and extensively quoted and reprinted in his lifetime, a success by no means accorded to all poets" (pp. 401-402). Yet favorable public notice was of cheap comfort to Keats, who, because of declining health, once more abandoned "Hyperion," which was to be his great work and equal in length to "Endymion." Ashley III, 15. Grolier, 100 English, 72. Hayward 233. MacGillivray 3. Sterling 523. HBS 68955. $13,500.

The Eve of St. Agnes is a romantic poem written by John Keats in 1819, published in 1820. This poem is written in Spenserian stanzas and is considered one of Keats's finest works. It tells the story of a young lady named Madeline and her romantic endeavor on the eve of St. Agnes.