John Keats: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)

Rating:
Summary: "Arise, good youth, for sacred Phoebus' sake..."
Review: This review is of -John Keats: The Major Works-,
edited by Elizabeth Cook (Oxford World's Classics)
ISBN: 0192840630, 2001, 667 pp.
There are now 3 major editions of the complete poems
of John Keats. Each of them has its own excellencies.
There is the -John Keats: Complete Poems-, edited by
Jack Stillinger (Belknap Press, Harvard) ISBN: 0674154312,
-John Keats: The Complete Poems-, edited by John Barnard
(Penguin Classics) ISBN: 0140422102, and also this
present volume, edited by Elizabeth Cook, ISBN: 0192840630.
A fact which both John Barnard and Elizabeth Cook point out
as editors is their debt, as well as the debt of all Keats
scholars, to Jack Stillinger. As she says in her "Note on
the Text": "In deciding which source text to use I am deeply
indebted to Jack Stillinger who in -The Text of Keats's
Poems- (1974) and in his subsequent edition of Keats's
-Poems- (1978) presents his informed and considered arguments
for and against each transcript and state of text. Prior
to his work editors had frequently created Keats's poems
from a patchwork of different source texts."
The glories of this Oxford Classics edition are the
same as with many of their editions, the fine "Introduction",
the wondrous notes to the poems (pp. 557 - 641), an excellent
selection of "Further Readings", Glossary of Classical
Names, Index of Keats's Correspondents (with much helpful
background information about them), and an Index of Poem
Titles and First Lines. In this volume, there are also
Appendix I, "St. Agnes' Eve" as found in George Keats's
manuscript, and Appendix II, "La Belle Dame sans Mercy",
as printed in the -Indicator-, 10 May 1820. Some editors
and Keats lovers feel the changes that Keats made to
the latter poem to publish in the -Indicator- mar the
wondrous tone and atmosphere, so they print the first
version.
In her "Introduction," Elizabeth Cook stresses several
important aspects of Keats's psyche and his reverences
toward other authors (Spenser and Milton, in particular).
From the side of the aspect of his psyche, she states:
"Keats conceived of history as a process of *actualizing*
the world's sum total of what is knowable and thinkable.
In Stoic fashion he postulates a finite quantity of
world-stuff of which Milton has used up an unfairly
large portion, therby depleting not only his contemporaries,
but posterity [later writers] as well.
* * * He writes with the assumption that a certain quota
of qualities, capacities, and experiences is allotted to
each individual." In relating of Keats's sensitivity,
sense of dedication, and love, she says: "In June 1818,
when one brother, Tom, was dying of tuberculosis and
the other, George, planning to sail with his new bride
for America, Keats wrote to his friend Bailey, 'My Love
for my Brothers from the early loss of our parents and
even for earlier Misfortunes has grown into a affection
"passing the Love of Women"." This was a section of
verse from the Old Testament regarding the love of
Jonathan, King Saul's son, and David, the exiled,
hunted song singer, which Herman Melville was also
attracted to.
The formatting in this edition is very readable,
the font is medium, not small, the layout of the
pages is uncrowded and accessible, so that even with
the longer poems one is not presented with a complicated
task by smaller type.
The excellence of this Oxford edition is the inclusion
of 87 (!) of Keats's letters to various correspondents
(pp. 348 - 543), as well as the prose pieces, "When
Alexandre the Conquerore was wayfayring" (which according
to the Notes was "Composed probably late 1815 while Keats
was a student at Guy's [Hospital]. The only source for
this fragment is Walter Cooper Dendy, -The Philosophy of
Mystery- (London, 1841), pp. 99-100 where it is quoted at
the end of a chapter on the pathology of 'Poetic Phantasy
or Frenzy." The other prose pieces are "Keat's Marginalia
to the Shakespeare Folio", "Keats's Marginalia to Milton's
-Paradise Lost-", a piece on "Mr. Kean" [the actor], and
the "Rejected Preface to -Endymion-." Keats's letters are
a very valuable source of information of his views on
poetry as a craft and an avocation, as well as providing
commentary on his times.
The only caution with these large-size Oxford Major
Works is that one should be very careful not to crease
the outside binding, as the pages if not sufficiently
glued, might tend to come apart. Otherwise the Oxford
Classics editons, and this one in particular, are
treasured resources of fine works as well as extremely
helpful scholarship.
-- Robert Kilgore.