KEATS, JOHN. Endymion: A poetic Romance. London: Taylor and Hessey, 1818. First edition, the half-title with the imprint on verso "Printed by T. Miller, Noble street, Cheapside,” the second issue with A6 cancelled and the five lines of errata printed on A6r, with the advertisements at the end dated May 1, 1818. Robert Browning’s copy, with his name (as "Robt. Browning") penned to the half-title. Blue boards backed with grey paper, new endpapers, the spine retaining fragments of the publisher’s label, housed in a green morocco pull-off case by R. Wallis. 8 3/4 x 5 5/8 inches (22.5 x 14.25 cm); x, 207, [1] pp., 4 pp. ads. Minor foxing, generally a clean, uncut copy.

Browning read Keats avidly and intensively beginning in 1827, when he was just fourteen. At that time he is known to have owned both Endymion and Lamia; first editions of both were still available from the booksellers. He knew members of Keats’s circle, including Leigh Hunt, who loaned him his dedication copy of the Poems of 1817. The present copy corresponds in the form of the signature etc. with that sold as lot 799 in the Browning Collection sale at Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge in 1913, though that was sold “in original boards, broken, and label defective” so some significant binding restoration must have taken place in the succeeding years. This is an exceptionally cogent association copy, linking as it does one of the greatest of the Romantic poets of the first half of the nineteenth century with one of the most enduring of the Victorian poets who succeeded him. Hayward 232; MacGillivray 2; Tinker 232.

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