Preface
The poems and the letters in this book are intended to be to a certain extent complementary. The poems have been chosen not only for their excellence but also for their suitability in providing information about Keats himself at each stage of his development; while the extracts from the letters, interesting as many of them are for the light they throw on Keats, are also intended to ‘write in’ the background of the poems. The text of both the letters and the poems is based on the most recent and authoritative reprints; a few modifications, mostly of punctuation, have been made with the idea of promoting easy reading.
The Notes on the poems have been written with two objects in view—to give additional information, and to encourage closer scrutiny of the text. As this book is meant to be nothing more than an introduction to Keats’s work, it has not been thought proper to incorporate the views of Keats's many commentators. The Notes on the Odes, however, make use of the essay on Keats in F. R. Leavis’s Revaluation, while the Notes on the two Hyperions have benefited from J. Middleton Murry’s discussion of them in Keats and Shakespeare. The help obtained from the writings of both these critics is gratefully acknowledged.
J. H. W.