“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.”

Keats’s letters — written between 1816 and his death in 1821 — are among the most revealing documents of the Romantic period. They trace his poetic ambitions, literary friendships, fierce devotion to his siblings, and the intense, often anguished love he felt for Fanny Brawne.

Many of the poems appear alongside the letters that carried them, offering rare access to his creative mind in motion. Edited with notes and context by John Barnard, this edition brings together the urgency, doubt and brilliance of a poet writing against time.