John Mullan, Gen. Ed., Lives of the Great Romantics II: Keats, Coleridge, and Scott by their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1997. ISBN: 1-85196-373-1. Price: £225 (for the set) Robert Southey, Ed., The Annual Anthology 1799, 1800. With an introduction by Jonathan Wordsworth. Poole and Washington: Woodstock Books, 1997. ISBN: 185477-202-3. Price: £55 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems 1797. With an introduction by Jonathan Wordsworth. Poole and Washington: Woodstock Books, 1997. ISBN: 185477-197-3. Price: £42

The facsimile reprints published by Woodstock Books over the last few years have given modern scholars a chance to read various pieces from the Romantic period in their original format, as well as to put them in perspective with other works considered important enough to deserve a modern edition. The two recent volumes published in the series certainly fulfil the ambition of the series, and reward any reader for their detailed perusal. Responding to a letter from William Taylor in which the publication of an annual anthology based on the French and German Almanacks was discussed, Robert Southey wrote on December 3, 1798: "I think of speedily editing such a volume." And the result was the first volume of the Annual Anthology , published in 1799, and the following companion volume in 1800. Modern readers are lucky in their reprinting as one volume into the series Revolution and Romanticism, 1789- 1834. Reading through the poetry contained in these two volumes, I quickly find myself agreeing with Jonathan Wordsworth that "The Annual Anthology is full of good things." (n.p.) Indeed, though the majority of poems might justly be considered as minor poetry, especially for Coleridge and Southey. There are many gems to be found here, as for instance Lloyd's 'To a Young Man', Lamb's 'Living without God in the World', and George Dyer's 'To the Nightingale'. Furthermore, reading 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter. A War Eclogue' amidst poems of lesser quality makes you re-evaluate your opinion of Coleridge's poetry, its place in contemporary poetry, and its reception at the turn of the century. The recent re-publication of Poems 1797 provides another opportunity to look at, as well as to contextualise, some early poems by Coleridge. Facsimile reprints are also used to great effect, though in a different way, by Pickering & Chatto in their collection Lives of the Great Romantics , published under the general editorship of John Mullan. Following a very good first series which dealt with Wordsworth, Byron and Percy Shelley, this second series of volumes deals with Keats, Scott, and Coleridge. Some contemporary recollections of these three Romantic writers tend to be available in short quotations in modern biographies of these writers. These volumes offer the opportunity to read numerous contemporary accounts in their original format, and thus grant the reader a unique perspective on the reception of these authors during the nineteenth century. This new set is undoubtedly an important addition to the corpus of primary works reproduced in facsimile version, and it should find a home in every library, alongside the first series and the forthcoming third one, focusing this time on William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Jennifer Wallace is the editor of the first volume of the series, which is devoted to John Keats, an author who had a unique biographical life in the years following his life. Wallace offers a very clear and concise introduction to the difficult question of Keats' early biographies and the creation of the Keats myth. As she remarks, She includes the whole of Shelley's beautiful Adonais , alongside extracts from the most of Keats' close friends such as Leigh Hunt, John Hamilton Reynolds, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Charles Cowden Clarke, and Joseph Severn. A long extract from Richard Monckton Milnes' Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats allows the reader to have a better understanding of the work which influenced Hunt's recollection of Keats in his own Autobiography (1850). Interestingly, Wallace also includes Hunt's early recollection of Keats in his Lord and Some of his Contemporaries (1828). Partly because of Coleridge's opium addiction, presented to the world in …