Lives of the Poet

Focused on Keats, this study of the development of literary biography in the 19th and early 20th centuries demonstrates the influence and importance of biography as a form. In a dramatic narrative, we see Keat's reputation developing from minor to major poet and follow the increase of his influence on the English and American poets of the century after his death.

After analyzing the autobiographical content of Keat's writing to establish the primary materials with which future biographers would work, the book proceeds through the first century of biographies of Keats, showing the importance of his biographers to his rise to prominence, and concluding with the outstanding biographical studies of the last twenty years, based on a more thorough understanding of texts and dates.

This book will have a strong appeal to scholars interested in the literature and culture of the Victorian period, biography as form, 19th-century intellectual history, and major poets of the English language.

An earlier version of this manuscript was awarded the Howard Mumford Jones Prize at Harvard.