Books and Manuscripts

John Keats's Copy of Edmund Spenser's Collected Works

[Keats, John] Spenser, Edmund
The Works of that Famous English Poet, Mr. Edmond Spenser...
London: Printed for Henry Hills for Jonathan Edwin, 1679. From the library of John Keats, with his signature and inscription on title-page, “John Keats, Severn's Gift, 1818”. Third edition (first complete edition). Folio. (x), 339, (1), 16, (10), 391, (1) pp. (erratic pagination toward rear); lacking pp. 259/260 ("Catalogue of Edwin's Books"). Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece. Full contemporary brown calf, red morocco spine label, stamped in gilt, sometime rebacked, spine and extremities dry and worn, label starting, light wear to boards; edges stained yellow; illustrated book-plate of bibliophile A. Edward Newton on front paste-down, Rockwell Kent-designed book-plate of Lucius Wilmerding on same; book-plate of Sol Feinstone on front free endpaper; title-page repaired in top and bottom edges verso, slight wear and brittleness to edges of same; small closed tear to left of Keats inscription, but not touching; contemporary ownership signature “J. Allen Trin Coll Camb” at top of title-page, later ownership signature of “Oba. Lane” above same; scattered light foxing to text; light dampstaining in bottom gutter of some leaves; scattered soiling; in green cloth box. Owings, The Keats Library 24; Newton, The Amenities of Book-Collecting and Kindred Affections, pp. 24-26 (title-page illustrated); Pforzheimer 980

Includes an autograph letter from rare book dealer Frank T. Sabin to A. Edward Newton, dated March 27, 1914: “John Keats, who stands himself, in the realm of poetry, next to the great Elizabethans. Spenser's Fairy Queen first fired his ambition to write poetry…”. Also included is a typed letter, signed by Philip Sabin to Arthur Swann, dated June, 1941, regarding the above letter from his grandfather, Frank T. Sabin. Finally, included is another typed letter, from Frank N. Owings, author of the census of Keats's library, to Sol Feinstone, the book's last owner, regarding the current volume. 

A remarkable association and great rarity, John Keats's signed copy of the collected works of Edmund Spenser, the poet who “fired the train of Keats’s poetic tendencies.” (1)

It was Charles Cowden Clarke's reading of Spenser’s Epithalamion to the 18-year-old Keats that is said to have awakened his genius and inspired his earliest poetic writings. Clarke recalled later in his life that Keats consumed Spenser's Faerie Queene like a young horse ramping through a spring meadow, with it leaving him enchanted and transformed into a poetic being. Despite Keats's brief life, cut short by tuberculosis at the age of 25, Spenser loomed large over his literary output, serving as a source of emulation, guidance, and in his final days, consolation and escape. From his first poem in 1814, aptly titled “In Imitation of Spenser", and throughout his short literary career, Spenserian elements such as stanza forms, meter, and spelling, as well as imagery and genre, provided a rich resource for Keats to find his own literary voice, as seen in Endymion to The Eve of St. Agnes, among others. As Clarke further recalled, ”What appeared most to delight him in Spenser (after the gorgeousness of the imagery) was the uncommon force and felicity of his epithets. This it was that first showed me his love of poetry; for I shall never forget the expression of pleasure and surprise in his face while speaking of that poet’s power in conveying by one epithet the complete character of an image.” (2) In the summer of 1820, increasingly isolated and with his health declining, Keats returned to The Faerie Queene, underlining what he considered the most beautiful passages for his love Fanny Brawne, whom he hoped in vain to one day marry, and penned his last composition before his death, a Spenserian pastiche, “In after-time a sage of sickle more.” (3)

Joseph Severn, Keats's friend, portraitist, and caretaker during his final days, recognized Spenser's impact on the young poet and presented this volume to him at the height of their new friendship. As Frank T. Sabin wrote regarding this volume, it was “the finest edition of the works of Spenser procurable…no doubt selected by Severn as the gift more likely than any other to be appreciated by Keats.” (4) Severn and Keats are said to have met as early as 1816, through a mutual friend of John’s younger brother, George. By 1818 when Severn gifted Keats this volume, Keats had renounced his career as a surgeon and was committed to a life of a poetry, having published his first book of verse only the year before. With his more mature work still ahead of him, 1818 was a period of significant poetic growth for Keats alongside deep self reflection about the nature of poetic identity. As he strove for creative independence from his friend and fellow writer Leigh Hunt and his circle, Keats embraced new ideas from William Hazlitt to help shape his own poetic identity, which by the end of the year culminated in his conception of the chameleon poet. Reflective of this search for his own voice is his Sonnet to Spenser, written in early 1818, in which he acknowledges his own limitations as a poet and his indebtedness, for better or worse, to the Elizabethan bard, writing, “Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine…be with me in the summer days, and I will for thine honor and his pleasure try.” The year was bookmarked with the publication of Endymion and the start of the unfinished Hyperion, and was marked by two personal losses, the death of Keats's brother Tom to tuberculosis, and the departure of George for America. Despite the isolation this would cause, the end of 1818 also saw the beginning of a relationship with his great love Fanny Brawne, who would inspire Keats to write some of his greatest works.

During this time Severn was a faithful and respected friend who traveled in the same artistic circles as Keats. Despite Severn's lack of literary acumen compared to Keats's rapacious reading habits the two took comfort in sharing their love of the arts with one another. “To Joseph his new friend’s knowledge seemed infinite. Dazzled, he followed Keats, and learned to love with him his heroes—Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare. His untrained love of poetry grew, he loved to hear Keats linger over some phrase when he was reading aloud, savouring its beauty and betraying his pleasure with ‘one of his delightful stares.’” (5) Through Severn, Keats grew to love and appreciate the visual arts, often accompanying him to the National Gallery and the British Museum, to see the works of Titian and the Elgin Marbles. As aspiring artists they both developed a mutual admiration for one another and were, as biographer Andrew Motion describes, equally torn “between creative hopes and practical demands” in their pursuit of creative expression, especially “in thinking how their work might be linked to the aims of the sister arts.” (6)

No doubt due to Keats's frequent recital of The Faerie Queen, Severn, who often harbored doubts about the quality of his own art, was inspired to compete in the prestigious Royal Academy of Art's annual painting contest, where he was then a student. His painting, Una and the Red Cross Knight in the Cave of Despair, would win the gold medal, the first time it was awarded in 12 years, and signal for Severn a promising career as a painter. A year later, in 1820, when the tuberculosis that would eventually kill Keats worsened, it was Severn alone who could and would travel with him to Italy, in the hopes that the warmer climate might improve his health. Over the long winter of 1820-21, Severn devotedly cared for Keats and nursed him daily as his health deteriorated, while also acting as a liaison between the ailing poet and his circle of friends in England. After months of pain Keats succumbed to his disease on February 23, 1821, and was buried in Rome. Severn would outlive his friend by 58 years and throughout this time, through lectures, readings, and written accounts of their friendship, champion the poet whose greatness went largely unrecognized during his own lifetime. In his own career Severn would establish himself as a painter, an English diplomat, and help found the British Academy of Arts in Rome. After his death, in 1879, he was buried next to Keats in Rome, where the two are still interred in the Protestant Cemetery. 

Although he wrote less than 100 poems, of which only half were published during his lifetime, Keats’s work, with the help of Severn and Keats's circle of admirers, would, over the 19th century, slowly gain the respect that eluded him while alive, and which now stands as a towering example of literary Romanticism. 

Books owned by John Keats are of the utmost rarity and seldom, if ever, come to market—least of all those as illuminating to Keats's poetic development as this one. Frank N. Owings, Jr., in his census of Keats's personal library published by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association, writes that the poet likely accumulated less than 100 books throughout his brief life. Shortly before his departure for Italy in 1820, Keats requested in his will that his chest of books be divided among his friends. That task fell to his friend Charles Brown, who dispersed the volumes, with many returning to their original owners. Those that survive are primarily in institutions, with very few remaining in private hands. Keats is known to have owned at least one other collected works of Spenser, acquired by him sometime immediately following his first reading of The Faerie Queen. That book, now at Harvard University, was given by Keats to his brother George, whose own inscription in it is dated 1816. Beth Lau, in Analyzing Keats's Library by Genre, indicates a possible third volume of Spenser, noted in Brown's list of books from Keats's library as “Odd vol. of Spencer,—damaged” (pp. 142-143, n58). This book is presumed lost, although it could possibly be the Harvard copy. An additional volume of Spenser, the aforementioned copy underlined by him for Brawne, is thought to have been Charles Cowden Clarke's copy, which was not owned by Keats, and is now thought to be lost. 

At the time of Owings's census, in 1978, he identified only 25 extant copies of books from Keats's library (plus an additional two that were unaccounted for by him at that time). This book is number 24 in that census. In the 46 years since Owings's publication, three additional books belonging to Keats have come to light: Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Tacitus's Orationes Omnes, and Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. A fourth book, Thomas Sackville's Poetical Works, which was listed but unaccounted for by Owings, was rediscovered in the 1980s. This increases the total number of known volumes to 29. (7) Of those 29, this book is one of only four that is believed to still be in private hands. The aforementioned Sackville copy, sold at Sotheby's in 1985, is now presumed to be in private hands (although its location cannot be ascertained with any certainty). Oliver Goldsmith's Grecian History (whose location was unknown to Owings but was listed by him) was last sold in 1914 at the J.F. Lovejoy sale, and is presumed to still be in a private collection or lost. Of the two recent volumes that have come up for auction, in 2014 and 2018, it is believed that Butler's Hudibras is now in a private collection, while Tacitus's Orationes Omnes is now at the Keats-Shelley House. Lastly, Tasso's Jerusalem is now at the Taranaki Museum in New Zealand.

This volume was considered by bibliophile, and one of the book's former owners, A. Edward Newton, to be one of the centerpieces of his vast collection—one which made his ”heart thump" upon acquiring from Frank Sabin in 1914. As he wrote in his memoir in 1918—and which still rings true today—books from Keats’s library are “practically non-existent”. (8) As such, this is only the fourth book from Keats’s library to come to auction in the past 39 years. (9) Compared to those three books this is certainly the most significant, and on an order of magnitude several levels above them. 

An incredibly rare volume from one of English literature's greatest poets.