Poems Published in 1820
The 1820 volume contains Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and the odes, and it is one of the most concentrated collections in English. Keats was twenty-four, and he died the following year.
His poetry is sensuous and precise, and the odes in particular are built out of a single question that keeps turning: how much of life should one give to beauty, and what does that cost. The language can be dense on a first reading. Start with To Autumn, then read the Ode to a Nightingale aloud.
Public-domain status
First published in 1820. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; John Keats died in 1821, so this work has been free to republish there since 1892.
Read the text free
- Project Gutenberg, ebook no. 23684 — plain text, EPUB and Kindle, checked by us
- Internet Archive — scanned editions and free audiobooks
- Open Library — edition history and borrowable copies
Keep reading
- Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman, 1855
- The Canterbury Tales — Geoffrey Chaucer, 1400
- Troilus and Criseyde — Geoffrey Chaucer, 1385
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage — Lord Byron, 1812
- Reading lists — 19 ways through the collection
Find a print edition on Amazon · As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Disclosure