Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The regime of publicity
- 1 Public opinion from Burke to Byron
- 2 Wordsworth's audience problem
- 3 Keats and the review aesthetic
- 4 Shelley and the politics of political poetry
- 5 The art of printing and the law of libel
- 6 The right of private judgment
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM
3 - Keats and the review aesthetic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The regime of publicity
- 1 Public opinion from Burke to Byron
- 2 Wordsworth's audience problem
- 3 Keats and the review aesthetic
- 4 Shelley and the politics of political poetry
- 5 The art of printing and the law of libel
- 6 The right of private judgment
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM
Summary
In the original preface to Endymion, Keats offers the following comment on the reception of his 1817 Poems:
About a twelvemonth since, I published a little book of verses; it was read by some dozen of my friends, who lik'd it; and some dozen whom I was unacquainted with, who did not. Now when a dozen human beings, are at words with another dozen, it becomes a matter of anxiety to side with one's friends; – more especially when excited thereto by a great love of Poetry.
In taking up the question of the public response to a volume of poetry, this passage might be set alongside Wordsworth's reflections on the reception of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. In the Preface to the second edition of 1800, Wordsworth describes his expectations upon the poems' first publication:
I had formed no very inaccurate estimate of the probable effect of those Poems: I flattered myself that they who should be pleased with them would read them with more than common pleasure: and on the other hand I was well aware that by those who should dislike them they would be read with more than common dislike. The result has differed from my expectations only, that I have pleased a greater number, than I ventured to hope I should please.
In contrast to Wordsworth's supreme self-assurance, what is striking about Keats's preface is how quickly this ironic stance toward the failure of his first volume of poems gives way to the pleadings and excuses he proceeds to offer for his second: “I fought under disadvantages,” he writes of the composition of Endymion.
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- Romanticism and the Rise of the Mass Public , pp. 76 - 110Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007