John Keats was born in London in 1795. He and his siblings were orphaned at a young age – his father died in a riding accident in 1804 and his mother died six years later. Keats then left school to train as an apothecary and a surgeon before dedicating his time to poetry. His first volume, Poems, was published in 1817 and only two more volumes, in 1818 and 1820, were published during his lifetime. In 1818 he fell in love with his neighbour Fanny Brawne but broke off their engagement due to his increasing ill health and lack of funds. In 1820 he moved to Italy where he died a year later of tuberculosis, the disease that claimed his mother and his brother Tom.

The imaginative impact of Keats’s life – his “orphaned” childhood, his letters, his poetry, his friendships, his illness, his agonizing love affair – has continued unbroken for nearly two hundred years

• Introduction - i: Introduction Chapter - 1: ‘I am as brisk’ Chapter - 2: Song (‘Stay, ruby-breasted warbler, stay’) Chapter - 3: ‘Give me Women, Wine, and Snuff’ Chapter - 4: ‘To one who has been in long city pent’ Chapter - 5: ‘O! how I love, on a fair summer’s eve’ Chapter - 6: To my Brother George (‘Full many a dreary hour have I passed’) Chapter - 7: To Charles Cowden Clarke Chapter - 8: ‘How many bards gild the lapses of time!’ Chapter - 9: On First Looking in To Chapman’s Homer Chapter - 10: On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour Chapter - 11: ‘Keen, fitful gusts are whispering here and there’ Chapter - 12: ‘Great spirits now on earth are sojourning’ Chapter - 13: ‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill’ Chapter - 14: from Sleep and Poetry Chapter - 15: Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition Chapter - 16: On the Grasshopper and the Cricket Chapter - 17: ‘After dark vapours have oppressed our plains’ Chapter - 18: Written on a Blank Space at the End of Chaucer’s Tale of ‘The Floure and the Leafe’ Chapter - 19: On Seeing the Elgin Marbles Chapter - 20: On the Sea Chapter - 21: from Endymion: A Poetic Romance Chapter - 22: ‘In drear-nighted December’ Chapter - 23: On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Again Chapter - 24: ‘Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port’ Chapter - 25: Robin Hood Chapter - 26: ‘Lines on the Mermaid Tavern’ Chapter - 27: ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ Chapter - 28: The Human Seasons Chapter - 29: To J. H. Reynolds, Esq. Chapter - 30: Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil Chapter - 31: On Visiting the Tomb of Burns Chapter - 32: ‘Old Meg she was a gipsy’ Chapter - 33: Lines Written in the Highlands after a Visit to Burns’s Country Chapter - 34: ‘Where’s the poet? Show him, show him’ Chapter - 35: ‘And what is Love? It is a doll dressed up’ Chapter - 36: Hyperion. A Fragment Chapter - 37: Fancy Chapter - 38: Ode (‘Bards of passion and of mirth’) Chapter - 39: Song (‘I had a dove and the sweet dove died’) Chapter - 40: Song (‘Hush, hush! tread softly! hush, hush my dear!’) Chapter - 41: The Eve of St Agnes Chapter - 42: ‘Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell’ Chapter - 43: A Dream, After Reading Dante’s Episode of Paulo and Francesca Chapter - 44: La Belle Dame Sans Merci. A Ballad Chapter - 45: To Sleep Chapter - 46: ‘If by dull rhymes our English must be chained’ Chapter - 47: Ode to Psyche Chapter - 48: Ode on a Grecian Urn Chapter - 49: Ode to a Nightingale Chapter - 50: from Ode on Melancholy Chapter - 51: Lamia Chapter - 52: ‘Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes’ Chapter - 53: To Autumn Chapter - 54: The Fall of Hyperion. A Dream Chapter - 55: ‘The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone’ Chapter - 56: ‘What can I do to drive away’ Chapter - 57: ‘I cry your mercy, pity, love – ay, love!’ Chapter - 58: ‘Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art’ Chapter - 59: To Fanny Chapter - 60: ‘This living hand, now warm and capable’ Index - ii: Index of Poem Titles Index - iii: Index of First Lines