The Immortal Evening: A Legendary Dinner with Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb [Paperback]

The author of the highly acclaimedHighly original.Idiosyncratic, heartfelt, at once sinuous and expansive.Who but a poet could bring such vitality of imaginative insight to history that a night passed nearly 200 years ago could come back to vivid life? . . . He gives his readers the great gift of showing not only the intermingled yarn of unique lives as they weave together and pull apartof one evening as it reaches forward and backward into arts eternitybut also a privileged glimpse into the inner life of the artist and the ongoing struggle of faith, ambition, devotion, vision that undergird not only the greatest works of art but also those that (so humanly) fall short of their lofty mark.Plumly has created portraits of Keats, Wordsworth, Lamb, and Haydon so sensitive and revelatory, one feels he must have known them and have attended the party. This book about the passion and heartbreak of art is, itself, a work of art, a majestic achievement.A dramatically detailed, compulsively readable, and surprisingly wide-reaching meditation on romantic art and poetry. This book may be as close as we will ever get to sitting at table with some of the nineteenth-century immortals.A gateway to the Romantics, with the spotlight firmly on Keats, Haydon, and Wordsworth. I cant think of a more lively, thoughtful, or erudite introduction to them. . . . Destined to become an essential companion to our study of Romanticism.Written with great eloquence and insight.Wide-ranging . . . lyrical . . . and deeply considered . . . an essay on mortality as much as immortality.A window onto the lives of the Romantic poetsthrough the re-creation of one legendary night in 1817.