Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #198703 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

Amazon.com Review
Whitbread Prize-winning biographer Andrew Motion (Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life) aims to broaden our understanding of John Keats (1795-1821) by paying close attention to the historical context in which he wrote and the political opinions he voiced. The poet was "of a sceptical and republican school," Motion argues, and Keats's work reflected his experiences "not just as a private individual, but socially and politically as well." This bracing reinterpretation stresses the vigor of Keats's character as well as his verse, burying for good the sentimental cliché of a sickly dreamer concerned only with art for art's sake.

From Library Journal
Motion's previous work, Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life (LJ 8/93), won Britain's Whitebread Prize. In his new book, he has re-created the life of the poet John Keats (1795-1821) through insightful observation and narrative clarity often lacking in such a scholarly work. Keats was orphaned as a boy, trained as a doctor before becoming a poet, and died in Rome at age 25. Immediately after his death, Shelley mythologized him in the elegy "Adonais," which helped create the myth of Keats as the quintessential poet. In this original biography, however, Motion has provided a thorough examination of the social, familial, political, and financial forces that shaped the real man rather than the poet of myth. One highlight is a discussion of the factors in Keats's short but productive life that influenced themes prevalent in his poetry, such as beauty and healing. Recommended for large public libraries and all academic libraries.?Kim Woodbridge, Athenaeum of Philadelphia
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Whether illuminating Keats's famous lines or unearthing long-occluded facts about the most ill-starred of English Romantic poets, this superb biographical study displays an unusually sensitive erudition. Keats died of tuberculosis in 1821, at age 25, leaving behind only a few slim volumes' worth of poems. In his lifetime Keats was roundly mocked by critics--so much so that many of his contemporaries imagined him to have died of shame. These facts have given rise to an image of him as a sickly dreamer, ``half in love,'' as one of his celebrated odes puts it, ``with easeful death.'' It is this image of Keats that Motion (Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life, 1993) tries to put to rest. Motion highlights the tough side of Keats's character, introducing us to the child prone to brawling and fits of rage, and to the young man whose strenuous walking tour of Britain may have contributed to the breakdown of his health. This Keats was intensely engaged with society. He nursed first his mother, and then his brother Tom, as they died of consumption, and his mother's death inspired him to enter the medical profession and train as a surgeon. Motion argues convincingly that Keats saw his poetic vocation as consistent with this work, showing how his poems abound in expertly depicted bodies and often seem to have a therapeutic aim. Sometimes this desired effect would be on the body politic: Motion shows too how Keats's poems were informed by his radical politics--shaped in great part by his mentor, the radical journalist Leigh Hunt--and by his reactions to such crises in the reform movement as the Peterloo massacre. Himself a noted poet, Motion writes sprightly, striking prose: For instance, he describes Fanny Brawne, Keats's inamorata, as ``unformed, frisky, and quick-tongued: conventional in her tastes; vehement in her enjoyments.'' Far from burying Keats in a doorstop-biography tomb, Motion has embodied him in a book that is itself vehemently enjoyable. (b&w illustrations) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Carefully Researched Biography - Perhaps Too Detailed for Casual Reading
Andrew Motion made extensive use of primary documents, including the fascinating letters of John Keats, to explore the personal, social, economic, and political context in which Keats created his remarkable poetry. This biography of John Keats ranks among the most carefully researched, best documented, and most detailed available. Andrew Motion's work will undoubtedly serve as essential critical reference work for English majors.

However, this highly detailed approach does make this biography rather formidable. I occasionally found myself lost in the details, searching for some path that would lead me closer to Keats' poetry. This is a long biography, almost 600 pages. I enjoyed those sections most in which Motion examined influences on particular poetry by Keats. In retrospect, I should have browsed some chapters, and even skipped some sections, rather than persistently read every page.

I have subsequently read a shorter biographical analysis by Stuart Sperry, titled Keats the Poet (Princeton University Press, 1973) that is better suited for a reader that desires to focus more closely on Keats' poetry, rather than upon details of Keats' personal life. The chapters have titles like The Allegory of Endymion, The First Hyperion, and From The Eve of St. Mark to La Belle Dame sans Merci, clearly illustrating the close alignment between biographical study and poetic interpretation.

The Life of a Poet as Seen Through the Eyes of a Poet
Andrew Motion's biography recognizes the historical circumstances in which Keats lived, approaching new historicist tenets while maintaining a clear focus on the poet's individual life and works. He traces political tensions and medical practices of the time to expand upon the existing academic vision of Keats's poetic life; here he is more than a poet. That said, Motion, a poet himself, exemplifies the sensitivity to the writing process when discussing Keats's work. His criticism of the poems is well-rounded, balanced, and aware of the poet's process of composition. Overall, the book is well-reseached and a necessary addition to the scholarship we have on John Keats.

Good but not Definitive Bio of Keats
Considering how short the life of John Keats was, it still amazes me that his biographers are able to create such weighty tomes. Andrew Motion's take on Keats, while long, is very through and readable. Motion argues that Keats, if not overtly political as say Shelley, was a poet who did care about the world of power and politics and was not content with poems on nature, the role of the artist etc. It's an interesting argument and Motion makes a strong case. The chief weakness of the book is Motion's habit of straying a bit too far from Keats and focusing on his friends and acquaintances. Now in some cases that is fine (his take on Haydon on Hunt and their influence on Keats is superb) but the reader can be forgiven if he wants to skip paragraphs and even pages on friends and acquaintances of Keats who did little to shape his life or his work. If not quite up to the magnificent biography of Keats by Bates, Motion's book is very good and, with his different take on the tragic poet, useful, even needed.