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 Keats'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. An introductory section discusses the uses of biography, its place in the English moral tradition, and the present need for a study of it that would parallel the attempt of historiography to explicate the means and ends of history. The state of the art of biography in the early 19th century is discussed, looking back to Boswell and comparing the most outstanding "Romantic" biographies. After analyzing the autobiographical content of Keats'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. - Jacket flap.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.