The Critical Heritage series gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also...

This book offers a revaluation of Keats' major poetry. It reveals how Keats' work is both an oblique criticism of the dominant attitudes to literature, sexuality, religion and politics in his period, and a powerful critique of the claims of the imagination. For all that he shares the optimistic humanism of progressives like Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley, Keats nevertheless questions the sufficiency of either Art or Beauty. Professor Barnard shows how the notorious attack on Keats as a Cockney poet was motivated by class and political bias. He analyses the problems facing Keats as a...