Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems is the third and last collection of John Keats, published in July 1820, a few months before his death. It contains his great odes, including Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn and To Autumn, and is often considered one of the greatest volumes of poetry in English.
The narrative poems
Lamia tells of a serpent turned into a beautiful woman who marries a young man of Corinth. Isabella, from Boccaccio, is a tragic tale of love and murder.
The Eve of St. Agnes, a romance in Spenserian stanzas, follows two lovers who escape from a hostile castle on a winter night.
The odes
The volume contains the odes written in the spring and autumn of 1819, a period of astonishing creativity for the poet, then aged twenty-three.
Ode on a Grecian Urn meditates on art and permanence; To Autumn celebrates the season with rich, calm images.
Hyperion
The book also includes Hyperion, an unfinished epic on the fall of the Titans, printed as a fragment.
The publishers added a note explaining that the poet had stopped writing it after the harsh reviews of Endymion.
Anecdotes
A nightingale in Hampstead
According to his friend Charles Brown, Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale in one morning in the garden of their house in Hampstead, where a nightingale had built its nest.
Rome
In September 1820 Keats sailed to Italy for his health. He died in Rome in February 1821, aged twenty-five, and is buried in the Protestant Cemetery there.
Frequently asked questions
When was the collection published?
In July 1820.
Which odes does it contain?
Among others, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn and To Autumn.
Which unfinished epic is included?
Hyperion.