Despised by many contemporaries as a Cockney versifier, in our own time Keats has outstripped more famous colleagues in public esteem. While Byron and Shelley languish in the academy, Keats is now regarded as the quintessential English Romantic poet: lyrical, passionate, tender, dreamy, sensuous. The Eve of St Agnes, Hyperion and – above all – the five great Odes represent the pinnacle of poetic achievement in English. The Everyman edition of the poems presents a re-ordered and re-edited version of the complete text with detailed notes to every poem, plus chronology and bibliography.
