Henry Kirke White was a young English poet who died at the age of 21, but left behind a significant body of work. This edition of his complete works includes his poetry, as well as his letters and other writings. The volume also includes an account of his life and a critical evaluation of his work by Robert Southey. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This book is the first-ever scholarly edition of one of the bestselling and most revered poets in the nineteenth century—a poet excluded from the canon by twentieth-century critics. A poor youth who died early from tuberculosis, Kirke White shaped the popular image of the Romantic artist as a young rebel against convention who is too sensitive to survive in the harsh commercial world. As a prodigy who made his incipient death the subject of his tragic poetry, he was influential on both sides of the Atlantic—on Keats, Byron, Shelley, Browning, Emerson and Bryant. The edition restores his powerful, macabre and prophetic verse to attention, and also demonstrates his variety and range. It includes a comprehensive introduction discussing the creation of his public image, the marketing of his poetry, and the impacts he made on nineteenth-century poetry, on labouring-class writing and on publishing history.