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Published Nov 2012
472 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
This landmark biography of celebrated Romantic poet John Keats explodes entrenched conceptions of him as a delicate, overly sensitive, tragic figure. Instead, Nicholas Roe reveals the real flesh-and-blood poet: a passionate man driven by ambition but prey to doubt, suspicion, and jealousy; sure of his vocation while bitterly resentful of the obstacles that blighted his career; devoured by sexual desire and frustration; and in thrall to alcohol and opium. Through unparalleled original research, Roe arrives at a fascinating reassessment of Keats's entire life, from his early years at Keats's Livery Stables through his harrowing battle with tuberculosis and death at age 25. Zeroing in on crucial turning points, Roe finds in the locations of Keats's poems new keys to the nature of his imaginative quest.
Roe is the first biographer to provide a full and fresh account of Keats's childhood in the City of London and how it shaped the would-be poet. The mysterious early death of Keats's father, his mother's too-swift remarriage, living in the shadow of the notorious madhouse Bedlam - all these affected Keats far more than has been previously understood. The author also sheds light on Keats's doomed passion for Fanny Brawne, his circle of brilliant friends, hitherto unknown City relatives, and much more. Filled with revelations and daring to ask new questions, this book now stands as the definitive volume on one of the most beloved poets of the English language.
"Starred Review. Roe's biography acutely displays the intensity, anguish and triumph of a great life for whom the clock was always ticking." - Kirkus Reviews
"Poetic in its own right, this absorbing book is a masterly study of its subject. " - Publishers Weekly
"An astonishingly fresh and observant new biography, with a magical sense of shifting moods and places. Meticulously researched and precisely visualised, it produces a kind of hypnotic video portrait of Keats, day-by-day and sometimes hour-by-hour. The fine evocation of the poet's disturbed City childhood is brilliantly fed back into the complex imagery of the later poetry. Above all perhaps, Roe's deep knowledge of Keats's wide and raffish circle of London friends – Hunt, Haydon, Brown, Hazlitt, Lamb, Reynolds, Severn and all the others – makes us see the poet from multiple angles, in all his fierce contradictions, so sympathetic and so strangely modern." - Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
"This new book promises to become the definitive biography of one of the major Romantic poets. For decades to come, readers and scholars of Keats will rely on the wealth of detail that Roe has uncovered and recorded." - Andrew Bennett, author of Keats, Narrative and Audience: The Posthumous Life of Writing
This information about John Keats was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nicholas Roe is professor of English, University of St. Andrews. He is the author of numerous biographical and critical works on writers of the Romantic period. He lives in Scotland.
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