Posthumous Keats, By Stanley Plumly

The title refers to Keats's own description of his "posthumous existence", the final 18 months when the medically trained poet recognised that he was not long for this world.

It was towards the end of this period, after the completion of his great poems, that Keats took what Plumly describes as "the long, claustrophobic, tubercular and stormy voyage" to Italy.

It is around this period, when Keats played a part in his "ultimate immortality" that inspired Plumly's luminous biography. He took a quarter of a century to write this "book of reflection, contemplation, mediation".