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John Keats: The Making of a Poet
Traces the life of Keats, examines the development of his poetry, and describes the factors which influenced Keats as a poet
488 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
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235 people want to read
About the author
Aileen Ward
12 books1 followerA member of the faculty of Sarah Lawrence, Ms. Ward was educated at Smith College and received her Ph.D. at Radcliffe College.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 16, 2016
This is the most compelling biography I've ever read. Keats had a life made for a great book, of course. His tragic childhood, with the deaths of his parents. His grisly training as a surgeon in the last age before anaesthetics and sterilisation. His brilliant friendships, with the famed wits and pens of his day. His travels around England and Scotland. His love for Fanny Brawne. His utterly perfect poems. His heart-striking final voyage to Italy, coughing and haemorrhaging, his money spent, his life ebbing, his friends absent, and the last lingering on the couch that brought him to his early grave.
These are extraordinary materials for a life, and Keats recorded them in great detail in his famed letters. The fact is, despite this, this biography exceeds all expectations.
Aileen Ward died in May, at the age of 97. She was a literary alchemist. Her approach is to treat Keats much as he and his Romantic contemporaries thought people ought to be treated: as a lost soul, in search of self-knowledge and self-command. She traces his various phases of self-examination, extracting evidence from the letters and poems about how Keats was feeling about himself, his art and his love. She is a biographer in the tradition of Robert Southey: concise, muscular and vivid. It is difficult to describe the book's virtues, because she succeeds in doing what most of the great biographers in this tradition do, and becomes invisible over the course of the work.
I am a man, and have been taught to suppress tears, even in private. The final chapter made my eyes burn. I am a lover of poetry, and dearly want to believe that Art can renovate the earth, though I am a practical person in a cynical age, and find most high defences of Art a bit silly. The epilogue covered me with goosebumps.
I already loved Keats. I am already an expert on Romantic poetry and its contexts. Perhaps I was especially susceptible to this book. But I think others would be too. This is my book of the year—and barely a week too soon.
These are extraordinary materials for a life, and Keats recorded them in great detail in his famed letters. The fact is, despite this, this biography exceeds all expectations.
Aileen Ward died in May, at the age of 97. She was a literary alchemist. Her approach is to treat Keats much as he and his Romantic contemporaries thought people ought to be treated: as a lost soul, in search of self-knowledge and self-command. She traces his various phases of self-examination, extracting evidence from the letters and poems about how Keats was feeling about himself, his art and his love. She is a biographer in the tradition of Robert Southey: concise, muscular and vivid. It is difficult to describe the book's virtues, because she succeeds in doing what most of the great biographers in this tradition do, and becomes invisible over the course of the work.
I am a man, and have been taught to suppress tears, even in private. The final chapter made my eyes burn. I am a lover of poetry, and dearly want to believe that Art can renovate the earth, though I am a practical person in a cynical age, and find most high defences of Art a bit silly. The epilogue covered me with goosebumps.
I already loved Keats. I am already an expert on Romantic poetry and its contexts. Perhaps I was especially susceptible to this book. But I think others would be too. This is my book of the year—and barely a week too soon.
July 16, 2021
This biography won the National Book Award in 1964.
John Keats was a tragic and notable figure of history because he died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821. He was only 25. But his poetry did not become so beloved until decades after his death. Although considered one of the Romantics there is a specificity to his poetry that is notably distinct for the time period - in my opinion.
He is one of at least a dozen famous English poets who died very young. His contemporary Percy Shelley perished in a sailing accident in Italy the following year. He was only twenty-nine. Although they were not friends (from Keats’ view the older Shelley was patronizing) it is quite odd that two of the most famous poets of the 19th century should die in Italy in such a short timespan.
4 stars. This is an engaging biography. If there were more details known about Keats’ childhood it might have garnered five stars. It is said by award that Keats did not discuss his childhood.
John Keats was a tragic and notable figure of history because he died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821. He was only 25. But his poetry did not become so beloved until decades after his death. Although considered one of the Romantics there is a specificity to his poetry that is notably distinct for the time period - in my opinion.
He is one of at least a dozen famous English poets who died very young. His contemporary Percy Shelley perished in a sailing accident in Italy the following year. He was only twenty-nine. Although they were not friends (from Keats’ view the older Shelley was patronizing) it is quite odd that two of the most famous poets of the 19th century should die in Italy in such a short timespan.
4 stars. This is an engaging biography. If there were more details known about Keats’ childhood it might have garnered five stars. It is said by award that Keats did not discuss his childhood.
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December 7, 2014John Keats had a most difficult life: high ambition, ideals and love which could not be fulfilled because of illness. Nevertheless, in his short 25 years, he took on some of the great questions. This is Aileen Ward's take on "Ode on a Grecian Urn", in which he considers the value of art:
"The imaginary world of art and the real world of experience, which he tried at first to disjoin, are in fact complementary and necessary to each other, for each serves to reveal the value of the other. If the real or 'true' world is viewed as intensely and disinterestedly as the poet contemplates the imaginary world of the urn, it yields up its own beauty; if the beauty of art is searched to the very depths of speculation, truth will be found there. The true beauty is not the merely beautiful beauty of 'an endless bliss,' but the difficult beauty of light and shade; so also the truth that this is 'a World of Pains and troubles' becomes beautiful when it is recognized as not merely necessary but desirable, as the truth that this world is also a 'vale of Soul-making.'"
In summing up, Ward says: "It is more than a miracle. It is a fact of poetic growth which can be traced step by arduous step through Keats's poems and letters, where he may be watched laboriously reshaping the language and the sensibility he inherited into an instrument adequate to his own ideal of poetry and his own vision of human experience; it is a living proof of that continual interanimation of tradition and original talent which is the life force of poetry."
"The imaginary world of art and the real world of experience, which he tried at first to disjoin, are in fact complementary and necessary to each other, for each serves to reveal the value of the other. If the real or 'true' world is viewed as intensely and disinterestedly as the poet contemplates the imaginary world of the urn, it yields up its own beauty; if the beauty of art is searched to the very depths of speculation, truth will be found there. The true beauty is not the merely beautiful beauty of 'an endless bliss,' but the difficult beauty of light and shade; so also the truth that this is 'a World of Pains and troubles' becomes beautiful when it is recognized as not merely necessary but desirable, as the truth that this world is also a 'vale of Soul-making.'"
In summing up, Ward says: "It is more than a miracle. It is a fact of poetic growth which can be traced step by arduous step through Keats's poems and letters, where he may be watched laboriously reshaping the language and the sensibility he inherited into an instrument adequate to his own ideal of poetry and his own vision of human experience; it is a living proof of that continual interanimation of tradition and original talent which is the life force of poetry."
July 19, 2016
Aileen Ward's biography on John Keats was absolutely marvelous and, for me, the greatest biography on Keats thus far written. I admit I haven't read every biography about Keats ever written, so my previous sentence does contain a bit of hyperbole, but out of the biographies I have read (there are several) Ward's flies far and above.
Ward spent nine years researching Keats, and those years were spent not in vain. What makes her writing stand out is the brilliant marriage between well-researched scholar and ardent votary; she was certainly an expert on Keats after nine years of research and it shows in the detail, but through her writing one can also clearly see her love for the poet and his poetry, which brings about a sort of heartfelt human quality to the work. Often biographies tend to lean toward extremes, such as being a bit too prosaic and pedantic, or too whimsical and imaginative that read a bit more like florid opinions rather than fact.
Ward's biography on Keats, however, contains no such extremes. It is a work of art that leads one through Keats's tempestuous and beautiful life in brilliant, poetic detail. This is a must-read for any admirer of Keats, or for anyone with a desire to learn more about him. I am most pleased to have this on my shelf.
I learned only in recent weeks that Aileen Ward died just less than two months ago.
*Aileen Ward (April 1, 1919 - May 31, 2016)*
Ward spent nine years researching Keats, and those years were spent not in vain. What makes her writing stand out is the brilliant marriage between well-researched scholar and ardent votary; she was certainly an expert on Keats after nine years of research and it shows in the detail, but through her writing one can also clearly see her love for the poet and his poetry, which brings about a sort of heartfelt human quality to the work. Often biographies tend to lean toward extremes, such as being a bit too prosaic and pedantic, or too whimsical and imaginative that read a bit more like florid opinions rather than fact.
Ward's biography on Keats, however, contains no such extremes. It is a work of art that leads one through Keats's tempestuous and beautiful life in brilliant, poetic detail. This is a must-read for any admirer of Keats, or for anyone with a desire to learn more about him. I am most pleased to have this on my shelf.
I learned only in recent weeks that Aileen Ward died just less than two months ago.
*Aileen Ward (April 1, 1919 - May 31, 2016)*
July 26, 2020
Although somewhat over-detailed and ponderous in length, Aileen Ward's biography of John Keats is nonetheless enjoyable, and undeniably comprehensive considering how short the actual life was. Despite the middle section of the book being something of a slog, the final chapter "End of the Voyage" is quite moving, as Ward details Keats' slow decline and death from tuberculosis in Rome. All-in-all, a decent if not exactly top-notch biography of one of the greatest poets of the English language.
May 26, 2022
This book is so important to me. I read it in high school and was immediately taken--not only by the story of Keats' brilliant short life, but by the discussion of his poetic development. Ward brilliantly supports her thesis that a poet is made, not born. What could be more exciting than to see how Keats made and remade poems that are now iconic? As an aspiring writer, reading this book made me think and gave me hope.
October 24, 2017
My Keats obsession continues.
April 17, 2018
an excellent piece of work!!
June 30, 2020
Very thorough and well written, also somewhat dense but it gives a very clear picture of Keats (or at least her interpretation of him).
February 2, 2021
John Keats back and forth in relationships and in beliefs; such a short life too. I enjoyed his poetry even when he graduates as a doctor.
March 20, 2022
A great good piece of work!! The finest of his Lives I have ever read . I could only think of this as I glided through the pages.... 'My Keats....he is Immortal'
O'erwhelm'd !!!
O'erwhelm'd !!!
December 2, 2024
One of the most well-written, immersive biographies I've read. If I loved Keats before reading this, I love him even more now.
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December 13, 2009a stunning and well-researched bio of the great poet
March 18, 2010
This book was 1st published in 1963 by viking press, I have the Jan. 1964 second printing hard cover on my fav book shelf and find it so very good .
to-buy
April 19, 2018Mentioned in Shadow in the Garden a biographer’s tale by James Atlas “a fine biography”
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews