Written in 1819 and published in 1820, Keats's haunting poem "The Eve of St. Agnes" is based on the superstition that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes. Featuring some of Keats's most luminous language and the timeless theme of young love struggling against the bitterness of the adult world, the poem became one of his most popular and influential works. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, artists like John Everett Millais, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, were inspired to paint scenes from the poem, and numerous publishers commissioned gorgeously illustrated editions of it. This 1900 volume features ornate designs and lettering by Ralph Fletcher Seymour, the prominent Chicago-based artist, publisher, and proponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement, as well as a preface by the English poet and critic Edmund Gosse.
