ABSTRACT
Virtually the whole course of Keats criticism, directly until the 1840s and indirectly until about 1900, was determined by two exceptional circumstances: his supposed death at the hands of the reviewers, and the early age at which he died. His death decided what attitude the reader should take, for or against, and his youth discouraged the critic from doing much more than simply take sides. Except for a brief spell of innocence (Nos. 1–9) before Blackwood's began their campaign against the ‘Cockneys’, it was not possible to discuss Keats's work without prejudice, and for this reason the present volume gives a good deal of space to the controversy. His friends thought he was a genius; his friends’ political enemies represented him either as a charlatan or a foolish boy, ‘Johnny Keats’, whose head had been turned by the company he kept. A review of 1848, looking back over thirty years, sums up the situation:
