John Keats

The Critical Heritage

G.M. Matthews, G.M. Matthews

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134782000
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels.

The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects.

The Collected Critical Heritage set is available as a set of 68 volumes and the series is also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES

General Editor: B. C. Southam

The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer's work and its place within a literary tradition.

The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries.

Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer's death.

John Keats

The Critical Heritage

Edited by

G. M. Matthews

First Published in 1971

Reprinted in 1995, 2000 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park,

Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

&

270 Madison Ave,

New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2009

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1971 G. M. Matthews

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN10: 0-415-13447-1 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0-415-56890-0 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-13447-7 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-56890-6 (pbk)

ISBN 0-415-13440-4 (set)

DOI: 10.4324/9780203199473

Publisher's Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

General Editor's Preface

The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near-contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in letters, journals, or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writer's historical situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures.

The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. Clearly, for many of the highly productive and lengthily reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, there exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality— perhaps even registering incomprehension!

For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far beyond the writer's lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear.

In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction, discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the author's reception to what we have come to identify as the critical tradition. The volumes will make available much material which would otherwise be difficult of access and it is hoped that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in which literature has been read and judged.

B. C. S.

Contents

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NOTE ON THE TEXT
• INTRODUCTION
• First Promise
  • 1 A wanderer in the fields of fancy, 1816
  • 2 LEIGH HUNT introduces a new poet, 1816
  • 3 WORDSWORTH on Keats, 1817, 1820
• Poems (1817)
  • 4 Review in Champion, 1817
  • 5 Notice in Monthly Magazine, 1817
  • 6 G. F. MATHEW on Keats's Poems, 1817
  • 7 LEIGH HUNT announces a new school of poetry, 1817
  • 8 A very facetious rhymer, 1817
  • 9 Review in Scots Magazine, 1817
• Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818)
  • 10 Letters and prefaces, 1818
  • 11 Review in Literary Journal, 1818
  • 12 BAILEY advertises Endymion, 1818
  • 13 A great original work, 1818
  • 14 A monstrously droll poem, 1818
  • 15 LOCKHART'S attack in Blackwood's, 1818
  • 16 CROKBR'S attack in the Quarterly, 1818
  • 17 A protest against the Quarterly, 1818
  • 18 REYNOLDS also protests, 1818
  • 19 SHBLLBY on Keats, 1819, 1820, 1821, 1822
  • 20 BYRON on the ‘Trash of Keats’, 1820, 1821–2
  • 21 Not a poem, but a dream of poetry, 1820
• Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems (1820)
  • 22 Keats's indelicacy alarms his friends, 1819
  • 23 CLARE on Keats, 1820, 1821, 1825–37
  • 24 Prodigal phrases, 1820
  • 25 Review in Monthly Review, 1820
  • 26 Notice in Literary Chronicle, 1820
  • 27 IBIGH HUNT displays Keats's ‘calm power’, 1820
  • 28 Review in Guardian, 1820
  • 29 Review in London Magazine (Gold's) 1820
  • 30 JEFFREY on Keats, 1820, 1829, 1848
  • 31 Review in Edinburgh Magazine (Scots Magazine) 1820
  • 32 Review in New Monthly Magazine, 1820
  • 33 Review in London Magazine (Bal...