Reading Order
LamiaLamia and Other Poems Reading Order
Lamia and Other Poems (1820) by John Keats was the last collection he prepared for publication before his death — and the most accomplished. The volume contains three long narrative poems (Lamia, Isabella or The Pot of Basil, and The Eve of St. Agnes), the unfinished Hyperion fragment, and four of the six great 1819 Odes (the Ode to Psyche had appeared separately; the Ode on Indolence was withheld). Lamia itself (1819; revised 1820) is the most psychologically complex of Keats's narrative poems — a retelling of Robert Burton's story (from The Anatomy of Melancholy) of Apollonius, a philosopher who unmasks the serpent-woman Lamia and destroys his student Lycius's happiness by doing so. Keats frames the story as a meditation on the conflict between cold philosophy (which 'unweaves the rainbow') and warm imaginative experience, between the lover who lives in his dream and the philosopher who insists on reality. The Eve of St. Agnes is the most purely beautiful of his narrative poems — a medieval romance in Spenserian stanzas about Porphyro's secret visit to Madeline on St. Agnes's Eve, suffused with moonlight, stained glass, and sensuous detail. Isabella (1818; based on Boccaccio) is earlier and less accomplished but is the origin of the Victorian taste for Keats as a poet of tragic sensuous beauty that the Pre-Raphaelites would exploit. The volume was published in July 1820; Keats died in February 1821.
Where to start
Lamia and Other Poems (1820) — any good Keats anthology will include it; the Penguin Classics Complete Poems (ed. John Barnard) gives it with excellent notes. Read in order: The Eve of St. Agnes first (the most accessible), then Lamia (the most complex), then Isabella (the most historical). The Odes at the end are the lyric summit.
Complete Lamia Book List
- 1Buy
Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
John Keats (ed. John Barnard)·1988·The best single-volume annotated Keats — includes the complete contents of Lamia and Other Poems alongside Endymion, Hyperion, the Letters, and the minor poems; Barnard's notes identify Boccaccio, Burton, and the Spenserian sources with precision. - 2Buy
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton·1621·The seventeenth-century prose masterpiece from which Keats took the Lamia story — Burton's account of the serpent-woman in Part 3 is the direct source; The Anatomy of Melancholy is also the origin of much else in the Romantic imagination and is one of the great eccentric prose works in the language. - 3Buy
The Odes of John Keats
John Keats·1819·The lyric summit of the same period — the six 1819 Odes are the concentrated lyric equivalent of the narrative richness of Lamia and Other Poems; reading the narrative poems alongside the Odes shows Keats's range within a single creative year. - 4Buy
Endymion
John Keats·1818·The long narrative poem that Lamia revises and refines — comparing the sensuous mythology of Endymion with the more controlled Lamia and Eve of St. Agnes shows how dramatically Keats developed between 1817 and 1819. - 5Buy
The Poems of Sappho
Sappho (trans. Anne Carson)·2002·The lyric poems that underlie Keats's sensuous mode — Carson's If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho is the most beautiful modern translation; reading Sappho alongside Keats shows the classical source of the erotic lyric intensity that Keats developed in the 1819 Odes and the narrative poems.
Lamia — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lamia by Keats about?
Lamia (1819; published 1820) by John Keats is a narrative poem retelling a story from Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Lamia, a serpent-woman transformed into human form by the god Hermes, falls in love with the young Corinthian Lycius and creates a magical palace for their happiness. When Lycius insists on holding a public wedding feast, his old philosophy teacher Apollonius attends and unmasks Lamia as a serpent — the palace vanishes, Lamia dissolves, and Lycius dies. Keats frames the story as a meditation on the conflict between cold philosophy and warm imaginative experience: 'Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy?'
What is The Eve of St. Agnes by Keats about?
The Eve of St. Agnes (1819; published in Lamia and Other Poems, 1820) by John Keats is a narrative poem in Spenserian stanzas based on the folk belief that a girl who performed certain rituals on St. Agnes's Eve (January 20) would dream of her future husband. Porphyro, who is from a rival family, secretly enters the castle where Madeline is sleeping and wakes her; she initially believes him a vision from her dream, but he persuades her to elope with him into the stormy night. The poem is celebrated for its extraordinarily rich sensuous imagery — moonlight through stained glass, the feast of 'candied apple, quince, and plum' — and for the ambiguity of its ending.
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