John Keats

First edition, second issue, a superb copy in original boards of the second of only three lifetime publications by Keats, comprising his longest single sustained poem, famous for its opening line: “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”

• John Keats (English).
• With imprint on verso of half-title reading "T. Miller, Printer, Noble Street, Cheapside." and with errata leaf in two states. 
• London: for Taylor and Hessey, 1818.
• ix, [iv], 207, [1], [4, ads date 1 May 1818].
• 8vo.
• Uncut in original publisher's boards, probably later printed paper title label to spine reading "Endymion / A /Poetic/ Romance."
• In a custom brown cloth clamshell box.

So savage and malevolent were the reviews of this poem by Blackwoods and the Quarterly—“Lockhart found it exquisitely funny that an apothecary, a fellow who confessedly knew no Greek, who had to read Homer in a translation, should venture on a classic theme” (MacGillivray)—that Keats’ supporters thereafter blamed the reviewers for Keats’ early death. This copy has the second-issue imprint to the verso of the half-title “T. Miller, Printer, Noble Street, Cheapside” and includes both states of the errata leaf (pp. xi-xii) with 5-line errata and 1-line erratum.

MacGillivray A2.

Ashley III:13.

Tinker 1419.

Hayward 232.