SOURCE: An introduction to Keats's Life of Allegory: The Origins of A Style, Basil Blackwell, 1988, pp. 1-44.

In the following excerpt, Levinson surveys aspects of Keats's life and writing within their original social context and studies the relationship between his life and works, noting that Keats was born into a lower social class than many other Romantics, including Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley. After discussing the way social disadvantages affected Keats's writing, Levinson reviews some of the early criticism of Keats's work, particularly that of Byron.

The true cause of Mr. Keats's failure is, not the want of talent, but the misdirection of it … [T]here is a sickliness about his productions, which shews there is a mischief at the core. He has with singular … correctness described his own case in the preface to Endymion [sic:] 'The imagination of a boy', he says, 'is healthy, and the mature imagination...