The life of Keats provides a unique opportunity for the study of literary greatness and of what permits or encourages its development. Its interest is deeply human and moral, in the most capacious sense of the words. In this authoritative biography--the first full-length life of Keats in almost forty years--the man and the poet are portrayed with rare insight and sympathy. In spite of a scarcity of factual data for his early years, the materials for Keats's life are nevertheless unusually full. Since most of his early poetry has survived, his artistic development can be observed more closely than is possible with most writers; and there are times during the period of his greatest creativity when his personal as well as his artistic life can be followed week by week. The development of Keats's poetic craftsmanship proceeds simultaneously with the steady growth of qualities of mind and character. Mr. Bate has been concerned to show the organic relationship between the poet's art and his larger, more broadly humane development. Keats's great personal appeal--his spontaneity, vigor, playfulness, and affection--are movingly recreated; at the same time, his valiant attempt to solve the problem faced by all modern poets when they attempt to achieve originality and amplitude in the presence of their great artistic heritage is perceptively presented. In discussing this matter, Mr. Bate says, The pressure of this anxiety and the variety of reactions to it constitute one of the great unexplored factors in the history of the arts since 1750. And in no major poet, near the beginning of the modern era, is this problem met more directly than it is in Keats. The way in which Keats was somehow able, after the age of twenty-two, to confront this dilemma, and to transcend it, has fascinated every major poet who has used the English language since Keats's death and also every major critic since the Victorian era. Mr. Bate has availed himself of all new biographical materials, published and unpublished, and has used them selectively and without ostentation, concentrating on the things that were meaningful to Keats. Similarly, his discussions of the poetry are not buried beneath the controversies of previous critics. He approaches the poems freshly and directly, showing their relation to Keats's experience and emotions, to premises and values already explored in the biographical narrative. The result is a book of many dimensions, not a restricted critical or biographical study but a fully integrated whole.

In this reissue of a classic work in modern literary criticism, W. Jackson Bate presents a thoughtful and informed investigation of the responses of English writers to the perennial dilemma of modern literature, concentrating especially on the period between 1660 and 1830.

"The chapters of this book were presented ad the Lowell Lectures, in Boston, in the spring of 1945. They treat a few aspects of a very large subject, the crucial transition which took place during the eighteenth century in European conceptions of the character, justification, and aim of art. No similar transition has been more fundamental and pervasive. Many of the assumptions which had underlain ideas of art in classical antiquity and in the Renaissance were gradually supplanted at this time by more individualistic and psychological conceptions of art and taste; and these conceptions, under various names, have largely dominated our thinking, about art to the present day. Perhaps more than any other single country, England introduced and encouraged this alteration of ideas, although England also ended by modifying an reabsorbing many of its effects into the main direction of English thought as a whole. The two series of conceptions immediately involved in this change have usually been put under the arbitrary headings of "classicism" and "romanticism." Both words are loose and inadequate, especially the term "romanticism." But continued use has given them such a number of connotations that they not only prove more convenient than others but even defy replacement. The purpose of these lectures is to sketch some of the more significant outlines of this evolution or interchange of ideas: to describe the primary premises which underlay conceptions of taste or aesthetic judgment in English classicism and romanticism, and to connect the supplanting of this one by the other with the broader shift in European thought which it reflects. The general form of a lecture hardly lends itself, of course, to minute analysis ; it tends, on the contrary, to encourage an oversimplification here has not been more excessive than the general character of the subject justifies."--from preface."

In November 1817, John Keats wrote to Benjamin Bailey, The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream - he awoke and found it truth. The Romantic poet's concept of the imagination was central to their poetry, becoming a persistent and powerful theme central to many works. In nine new essays by scholars commissioned in honour of Walter Jackson Bate, this collection examines the uses of the imagination in the poetry of Keats and Coleridge, and by extension in all Romantic literature.

Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944) influenced the attitudes of a generation of Americans on the race issue and established Myrdal as a major critic of American politics and culture. Walter Jackson explores how the Swedish Social Democratic scholar, policymaker, and activist came to shape a consensus on one of America’s most explosive public issues.

In this biography - a work that won three of the most prestigious literary prizes this country offers - W. Jackson Bate delves deep into the character that formed Johnson's awesome intellect and fueled his prodigious output. The first great modern biography of Johnson, it confirms that his statements and judgments on literature, politics, religion, behavior - on all human experience - are as relevant in our age as when they were first uttered. This new edition brings a modern classic back into print and includes a new preface from the author.

This study, first published in 1945, gives a precise description of the unfolding of a great poet’s craftsmanship and suggests alignments of the technical progression with the changes of the mind. Metrical analysis is given in order to throw light on Keats’ general stylistic development using the simplest terminology and in a traditional manner. Earlier English prosodic writings are referred to throughout in order to place the style and development in the context of the period. Arranged chronologically, each chapter looks at a particular work or group of works drawing together evidence about Keats’ poetic direction. This classic work from a well-known Keats scholar is an important enlightening contribution within the extensive study of Keats’ poetry and letters.