The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats (Volume 1); Now First Brought Together, Including Poems and Numerous Letters Not Before Published

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883. Excerpt: ... END YMION: a poetic Romance. BY JOHN KEATS. THE STRETCHED METBE Of AN ANTIQUE SONG. LONDON: PRINTED FOB TAYLOR AND HESSEY, 93, FLEET STREET. 1818. 107 In Woodhouse's copy of Endymion (see Preface) there is a note against the passage so I will begin &c, line 39, Book I, to the effect that the poem was begun in the spring of 1817 and finished in the winter of 1S17-18; and in the title-page he has inserted April before 1818. The statement corresponds with Keats's own record of May 1817 (see Letters) that he was busying himself at Margate with the commencement of Endymion. This reference cannot of course be to the same Endymion that he expected to finish in one more attack when he wrote to Clarke in December 1816. Probably the conception referred to by Lord Houghton (Aldine edition, page xvii) as long germinating in his fancy really took bodily form and substance, and that substance was.wholly rejected, when Keats came within the radius of Haydon's heroic art propaganda, for the design on an ambitious scale which the next Spring was to see in print. Woodhouse records that at the end of the first draft is written Burford Bridge, Nov. 28, 1817. His statement as to the month of issue scarcely does more than confirm the record of the series of documents bearing on this point published by Lord Houghton. Thus, the first book was in the publisher's hands by January 1818, and the last was copied out by the 14th of March; the original Preface, rejected upon the unfavourable verdict of Reynolds and others of Keats's friends, is dated the 19th of March; the Preface as published is dated the 10th of April, and went, it seems, in a letter to Reynolds of that date; and on the 27th of April Keats wrote to Taylor apologizing for giving him all the trouble of Endymi...