Keats-Shelley Journal Feature: Beth Lau

This post is the third in a series presenting blog publications from the authors featured in the latest volume of the Keats-Shelley Journal, Volume LXV. In these short pieces, authors reflect on their recent work and dialogue with other scholars in the discipline. Below is a Q&A with Beth Lau addressing her article “Analyzing Keats's Library by Genre”. This series is curated by Lindsey Seatter, for the Keats-Shelley Association of America Communications Team.1. Your article works through a taxonomy for Keats’s library.  From this information you make inferences about Keats’s reading, experience, and taste.  What can this taxonomy tell us about Keats’s bibliophilic imagination?As I explain in my essay, Keats like many other Romantic writers was a professed lover of books, valuing them as physical objects as well as sources of intellectual and imaginative nourishment. He gave or bequeathed cherished books to his fiancée, family, and friends, suggesting that he considered these his most valuable possessions, with which his own identity was intermingled. “Bibliophilic imagination” is an appropriate term to use in relation to Keats, because to a remarkable degree his poems were inspired by and constructed from his reading. Although all literary works build on and respond to other works, Keats’s poetry is unusual for the extent to which it engages in dialogues with other texts. The paradox is that, in doing so, Keats creates a style uniquely his own. The more we know about Keats’s books and reading, I argue, the better we can understand the poet and his work.2. Were there any volumes in Keats’s library that particularly surprised or fascinated you?The oddest book to me in Keats’s library was a collection of Bishop William Beveridge’s sermons, which does not seem in keeping with Keats’s typical interests. As I mention in the article, it might have been a family bequest, like a Bible and prayer book Keats inherited from his grandmother, or a gift from a friend. Then again, Keats’s wide-ranging interest in many subjects may have embraced religious works like Beveridge’s.  Some other books in Keats’s library that piqued my interest and that I most enjoyed exploring were Les Oeuvres d’Ambroise Paré, a medical text by a sixteenth-century French surgeon; Memoirs of the Life of Joshua Dudley, which I had never heard of before and found amusing; and several travel books, the research of which gave me new insights into the history of tourism in the early nineteenth century and Keats’s participation in this cultural phenomenon.  I believe that more work could be done on many of the genres and individual texts treated in the article, and in fact I am now beginning research for an essay on Keats as a reader of novels.3. Of the 110 books you categorize from Keats’s library, some of the most popular genres are poetry, history, and essays, whereas novels, letters, and travel guides are less common.  Is there any book, or category of books, in your own library that stand out for you or that you would like to be known for?It will not be surprising that my personal library is largely composed of British and American literary works and scholarly studies about these, especially with respect to the Romantic period.  Some of the genres that reflect other interests of mine include stories of dogs and horses from my childhood; Russian novels (in translation) I read as a teenager and Russian history texts from multiple courses I took in college; art and art history books; French novels (in translation), especially Proust and Balzac; and psychology books, chiefly those from cognitive and evolutionary perspectives, as well as studies of animal behavior and cognition.