Written in a fraction over four years, 1816 to 1820, the large body of Keats's letters forms the most complete portrait we have of any English poet. With extraordinary candour and self-knowledge Keats gives us his experience of almost everything that can happen to a young man between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five; an all but day-to-day account of the working processes of a poet; and finally as Robert Gittings says, `some of the most profound comments on art, philosophy, and the human condition that any single person has produced'. Robert Gittings has selected 170 letters, each printed in full, with invaluable explanatory notes, and an Appendix containing new readings and textual discoveries based on his own study of the manuscripts.