Keats's Paradise Lost

"Indispensable . . . Lau's edition will prove of inestimable benefit as a rich textual resource for scholars, teachers, and students working on a variety of cutting-edge topics."--Greg Kucich, University of Notre Dame

This edition and analysis of John Keats's marginalia in his personal copy of Milton's epic poem makes available for the first time all of Keats's Paradise Lost annotations and textual markings. It is the most accurate and fully annotated edition of  the marginalia available. Accompanying discussion analyzes patterns and themes in Keats’s Paradise Lost marginalia, dates, them, and explores the practice of writing in books in the early 19th century. Lau's work presents new primary Keats material and offers the first formal study of this neglected aspect of Keats’s canon.
 Keats's marginalia convey a wealth of information about his reading habits and aesthetic tastes generally, as well as about his life, personality, and creative process.  It also enhances our understanding of Milton's deep and far-ranging influence on Keats's thought and work.  In addition, the book makes an important contribution to the study of marginalia as a genre--one that flourished in the Romantic era.  Finally, it helps to document a stage of history in the reception of Milton's poem and therefore will be of interest to Milton scholars as well as to Keats and Romantics scholars.  

Beth Lau is professor of English at California State University, Long Beach.  She is the author of Keats's Reading of the Romantic Poets and coeditor of Approaches to Teaching Brontë's Jane Eyre. She has also published a number of articles on Keats and other Romantic writers.