John Keble

Rev. John Keble (25 April 1792 - 29 March 1866) was an English poet and churchman, a leader of the Oxford Movement. His books of poetry include The Christian Year, which is estimated to have sold 1 million copies.

John Keble (1792-1866). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

John Keble
Born	25 April 1792 Fairford, Gloucestershire, England
Died	29 March 1866 (aged 73) The Hermitage Hotel, Bournemouth, Hampshire, England

Life

Overview

Keble, the son of Rev. John Keble (vicar of Coln St. Aldwyn's, Gloucestershire), was born at Fairford in the same county. He was, educated by his father and at Oxford, and was for some years tutor and examiner in the University. His ideal life, however, was that of a country clergyman, and having taken orders in 1815, he became curate to his father. Meantime he had been writing The Christian Year, which appeared in 1827, and met with an almost unparalleled acceptance. Though originally anonymous, its authorship soon became known, with the result that Keble was in 1831 appointed to the Chair of Poetry at Oxford, which he held until 1841. In 1833 his famous sermon on "national apostasy" gave the initial impulse to the Oxford movement, of which, after the secession of Newman to the Church of Rome, he, along with Pusey, was regarded as the leader, and in connection with which he contributed several of the more important "tracts" in which were enforced "deep submission to authority, implicit reverence for Catholic tradition, firm belief in the divine prerogatives of the priesthood, the real nature of the sacraments, and the danger of independent speculation." His father having died, K. became in 1836 Vicar of Hursley, near Winchester, where he remained until his death. In 1846 he published another book of poems, Lyra Innocentium. Other works were a Life of Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, and an edition of the Works of Hooker. After his death appeared Letters of Spiritual Counsel, and 12 volumes of Parish Sermons. Keble was one of the most saintly and unselfish men who ever adorned the Church of England, and, though personally shy and retiring, exercised a vast spiritual influence upon his generation.

Youth and education

Keble was born at Fairford, Gloucestershire His father, also John Keble, was vicar of Coln St. Aldwins, a neighbouring village, but resided at Fairford in a house of his own. His mother, Sarah, was daughter of John Maule, incumbent of Ringwood, Hampshire. Their family consisted of 2 sons and 3 daughters, John being the second child and eldest son.

John and his younger brother Thomas were educated solely by their father, who taught them so well that they both obtained scholarships to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the college of which their father had been a scholar and fellow. John Keble was elected in December 1806.

The undergraduates and bachelor scholars of Corpus lived on the most familiar terms, and many of the friendships formed by Keble at college were lifelong: John Taylor Coleridge (his future biographer), Charles Dyson, George Cornish, and Thomas Arnold were his chief associates.

In 1811 Keble won double first-class honours, and was elected to a fellowship at Oriel, where he was brought into contact with a set of men who gave the intellectual tone to the university. Copleston was provost, Davison a leading tutor, and Whately was elected a fellow at the same time as Keble.

In 1812 Keble won the university prizes for English and the Latin essays. He resided at Oxford, taking private pupils, and in 1813 was appointed public examiner in the classical school. In 1816 he was examiner for responsions, and in 1818 he became college tutor at Oriel. In 1821 he was again appointed public examiner, and held that office until 1823, when he resigned his tutorship; and on the death of his mother in May 1823 he left Oxford and resided with his father and two surviving sisters at Fairford.

Church career

On Trinity Sunday 1815 Keble had been ordained deacon, and in 1816 priest, by the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Jackson). His earliest clerical work was the sole charge of 2 small contiguous parishes, East Leach and Burthorpe, Gloucestershire. After leaving Oxford he undertook in addition the curacy of Southrop. The entire population of the 3 parishes did not exceed 1,000, and the income derived from them was only £100. There was a good house at Southrop, and there, without receiving any remuneration except a moderate contribution towards the household expenses, Keble sometimes had pupils, among whom were Robert Wilberforce, Hurrell Froude, Isaac Williams, and Sir George Prevost.

In 1824 the archdeaconry of Barbados was offered to him by Bishop Coleridge, but he declined this, the only offer of a dignity that he ever received, on account of his father's weak state of health. In 1825 he accepted the curacy of Hursley, near Winchester, of which parish Archdeacon Heathcote was vicar; but in the next year his younger sister, Mary Anne, died, and as his elder sister, Elizabeth, was an invalid, he felt it his duty to return to Fairford, and to supply his father's place at Coln.

In 1827 the provostship of Oriel fell vacant owing to the promotion of Dr. Copleston, and Keble's friends were anxious that he should succeed to the post; but the majority of the fellows, including Pusey and Newman (though Newman distinctly said that he could never vote against Keble), were inclined to favour his competitor, Edward Hawkins (1789–1882), so he quietly withdrew from the contest. The death of Archdeacon Heathcote left the vicarage of Hursley vacant in 1829, and it was offered to Keble, but he declined it on the ground that he would not quit his father.

In 1830 he was nominated one of the Oxford examiners for the India House examinations for the civil service, and held that office for 2 years. In 1831 the Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Phillpotts), considering Keble "the most eminently good man in the church," offered him the valuable living of Paignton, Devonshire, which, as in the case of the other offers, he rejected, on account of his father's health.

In 1835 his father died, and in the same year he married Charlotte Clarke, the younger sister of the wife of his brother Thomas. He had known her from childhood, and her father was also a fellow of Corpus Christi College.

The living of Hursley again fell vacant in 1836; it was once more offered to Keble by the patron, Sir William Heathcote; he at length accepted it, and was instituted 9 March 1836. For the next 30 years Hursley was his home, and the record of his outer life is simply that of an exemplary parish priest. Daily services, confirmation classes, village schools, church building or restoration, parochial visiting, correspondence, which continually increased as he became more and more valued as a spiritual adviser, formed the regular occupation of his life.

Oxford Movement

It seems strange that this shy, homely, unambitious man, living so retired a life, should yet have been the prime factor in the great religious movement of his time. Newman emphatically asserts in his Apologia that Keble was the "true and primary author" of the Oxford movement. The explanation must be sought in his character and writings.

Keble was from first to last a consistent churchman. The principles which he imbibed from his father at Fairford guided him all through his life. His opinions were not radically changed, though they may have been developed. This gave a calmness and confidence to his teaching which were especially impressive in a time of restless change. In his sermon on National Apostasy he says that, "as a true churchman, he is calmly, soberly, demonstrably sure that sooner or later his will be the winning side, that the victory will be complete, universal, eternal."

He was, indeed, by no means satisfied with the state of the church of England as it was, but he gladly recognised signs of improvement, and his tone becomes much more hopeful in his later writings. He never dreamed of seeking relief in the Roman communion, and was almost as much grieved by Newman's conversion as by his wife's dangerous illness at the same time. Some of the Oriel "Noetics" took this fixity for narrowness. But though failing to sympathise with any who wavered in their allegiance to the church, he took broad views of life within the church's limits.

With his pupils at Southrop he lived as a boy among boys. He disapproved of the austerity of William Law, whom he otherwise admired, and thought that even the Imitation of Christ required to be read with caution. He was attracted by the freshness and breadth of Scott, and even by the robustness of Warburton. The tenacity with which he clung to Butler's dictum that ‘probability, not demonstration, is the very guide of life,’ was characteristic of his masculine mind.

Retirement

In his retirement he took a deep interest in the affairs of the world outside Hursley, both ecclesiastical and civil. He was a tory of the old school, a cavalier, and a lover of the memory of Charles I; but he adhered to the last — that is, until the Oxford election of 1865 — to Mr. Gladstone, on account of his churchmanship.

The death in 1860 of his sole surviving sister, Elizabeth, who divided her time between Bisley (the home of her brother Thomas) and Hursley, closely followed that of one of his oldest and dearest friends, Charles Dyson. At the same time the evident breaking-up of his wife's health tended to shatter him, and he had an attack of paralysis in 1864.

Mrs. Keble's health rendered it necessary for them to seek a warmer climate in winter. Torquay, Penzance, and finally Bournemouth were their resorts. All the changes were on Mrs. Keble's account, but she survived her husband. He died, after only a week's illness, at Bournemouth, on 29 March 1866. He was buried in Hursley churchyard, close to the grave of his sister Elizabeth; and 6 weeks later the remains of Mrs. Keble were laid by his side.

Writing

The Christian Year

Main article: The Christian Year (Keble)

The literary position of Keble must mainly rest upon The Christian Year: Thoughts in verse for the Sundays, and Holidays throughout the year, the object of which was, as described by the author, to bring the thoughts and feelings of the reader into unison with those exemplified in the Prayer Book. The poems, while by no means of equal literary merit, are generally characterized by delicate and true poetic feeling, and refined and often extremely felicitous language; and it is a proof of the fidelity to nature with which its themes are treated that the book became a religious classic with readers far removed from the author's ecclesiastical standpoint and general school of thought.

Poetics and poetry

In 1839 appeared The Psalter; or, Psalms of David in english verse; by a member of the University of Oxford; adapted for the most part to tunes in common use. Keble tells us in the preface that he feared "that the thing attempted is, strictly speaking, impossible." Pusey revised the book, which has never been popular, but is useful as a commentary from its faithfulness to the original.

In 1841 he published the lectures which he had delivered during his 10 years' tenure of the Oxford poetry professorship, under the title, De Poeticæ Vi Medicâ: Prælectiones Oxonii habitæ annis mdcccxxxii-xli, dedicating them "viro vere philosopho, Gulielmo Wordsworth," whom he calls "divinæ veritatis antistes." In these lectures he works out his favourite theory of primary and secondary poets. It is, as Mr. Gladstone termed it, "a refined work," but being written in a dead language, its circulation was, of course, very limited.

The profits of The Christian Year had been devoted to the restoration of Hursley Church. More money was required for the same purpose, and in 1846 he published another volume of hymns, which he had written to solace himself in "the desolating anxiety of the last two or three years," during which Newman's secession had taken place. The title was Lyra Innocentium: Thoughts in verse on Christian children, their ways, and their privileges. Thoroughly realising the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, he saw in a newly baptised infant an image of purity such as no other being on earth could present. The rarity of this view and the stronger insistence upon the doctrines of the Tracts helped to make the book less popular than its predecessor, although Sir John Coleridge and Dean Stanley recognised a higher strain of poetry in it.

Scholarship

Keble's next work was a new edition of Hooker. Having spent 5 years upon the task, and having received help from his brother, Thomas Keble, and his friend Dyson, he published Hooker's Works at Oxford in 1836. It was still the standard edition when revised by Deans Church and Paget in 1888.

In 1838 Keble, in conjunction with Newman and Pusey, began to work at the well-known series entitled ‘The Library of the Fathers.’ The lion's share of the work seems to have fallen on Charles Marriott; Keble translated Irenæus, and revised some other translations. He was also, of course, much occupied with The Tracts for the Times, 7 of which—viz. Nos. iv. xiii. lii. liv. lvii. lx. and lxxxix.— were from his pen. Of these the most remarkable is No. lxxxix., "On the Mysticism attributed to the Early Fathers," which has been republished in a separate volume.

Keble also gave assistance to other writers of the Tracts; and when the storm broke out against No. xc. in 1841 he claimed his share of the responsibility on the ground that he had seen and approved of it before its publication. He wrote and printed a letter addressed to Sir J.T. Coleridge explaining his position; it was not published at the time, but was privately circulated. In 1865, under the title of "Catholic Subscription to the xxxix Articles, considered in reference to Tract xc.," it was reprinted with the new edition of Tract xc., containing Dr. Pusey's "Historical Preface."

Keble also helped Newman in editing the Remains of Richard Hurrell Froude, a work which, as Newman says, perhaps more than any other caused disturbance in the Anglican world.

In 1844 he wrote a forcible pamphlet in defence of William George Ward, whom it was proposed to deprive of his degrees on account of the Ideal Church. His act was the more generous as he was not acquainted with Ward.

Miscellaneous

In 1847 appeared the only complete volume of Keble's sermons published during his lifetime. It was entitled Sermons Academical and Occasional, and was mainly intended, as the preface indicates, to prevent churchmen from following the example of Newman; and the characteristic argument was that it was the safer course for men to remain in the church of their baptism. This volume contains the famous assize sermon on "National Apostasy," preached at Oxford in 1833, which Newman "always considered the start of the Oxford Movement." It is at once singularly plain, and thoroughly brave and outspoken.

Keble also contributed frequently to the British Magazine, edited by the Rev. Hugh James Rose. Among other things he wrote a series of articles on church reform, signed ‘K.,’ and some sonnets. He also published some "Pastoral Tracts on the Gorham Question" (‘A Call to Speak Out,’ ‘Trial of Doctrine’) in 1850. The Divorce Bill of 1857 drew from Keble a pamphlet entitled "An Argument against Repealing the Laws which treat the Nuptial Bond as Indissoluble," and this was followed by a longer "Sequel" in the same year.

In 1857 he also published the treatise On Eucharistical Adoration, called forth by the decision of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Denison case. He had long been occupied with the book, over which he took far more time and trouble than over anything else that he published.

About 1846 the project of editing the ‘Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology’ was formed. Keble undertook to edit Bishop Wilson's works and to write a life of the author. The Life of Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, was not published until 1863, after 16 years of engrossing labour, and 2 visits to the Isle of Man. It filled 2 volumes, and "served as an introduction to the complete collection of the bishop's works, which filled six other volumes" in the ‘Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology.’ The great attraction of the subject to Keble was the Manx discipline, on which he dwells in rather excessive detail.

The only other work published by Keble himself, apart from separate tracts and sermons, was A Litany of Our Lord's Warnings, 1864, which was called forth by those who denied the doctrine of eternal punishment.

Posthumous

Keble had many posthumous publications. In 1867 appeared a volume entitled Sermons Occasional and Parochial. This was edited by his brother, and contains his first 2 sermons, and a sermon of every year of his ministry, probably selected in order to show how little his opinions changed. Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service appeared in 1868; from 1875 to 1880 11 volumes of Sermons for the Christian Year, under the superintendence of Dr. Pusey; and in 1880 a volume of Outlines of Instructions or Meditations for the Church Seasons, edited, with a preface, by the Rev. R.F. Wilson, to whom, with Keble's brother Thomas, all his sermons were entrusted with a view to selection for publication.

In 1869 appeared a volume of Miscellaneous Poems, with a preface signed "G. M., Chester;" George Moberly, Keble's intimate friend and neighbour, at that time canon of Chester. These include his ode as poetry professor on the occasion of the installation of the Duke of Wellington as chancellor of the university; 45 hymns contributed to the Lyra Apostolica under the signature ‘γ,’ which first appeared in the British Magazine; several contributed to the Salisbury Hymnal; and 4 to The Child's Christian Year.

In 1870 was published a singularly interesting volume, Letters of Spiritual Counsel and Guidance, edited by his original curate and lifelong friend, Rev. R.F. Wilson. In 1877 appeared Occasional Papers and Reviews, with a preface by Dr. Pusey, including a striking letter on Keble by Cardinal Newman. The reviews include the once famous (80-page) review of Lockhart's Life of Scott, which illustrates the share which Sir Walter had in preparing the way for the Oxford Movement (Brit. Critic, 1838).

In 1869 an article from the British Critic of October 1839 was republished under the title of The State in its Relations with the Church, with a preface by Canon Liddon. In 1877 was also published Studia Sacra, with a preface by ‘J.P.N.’ (Canon Norris). These included fragments of a commentary on St. John's Gospel, only reaching the 15th verse of the 1st chapter, which Dr. Pusey had persuaded him to undertake in 1863, and a specimen of a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans which he had been asked in 1833 to contribute for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Critical introduction

by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

Keble was not merely, like Isaac Watts or Charles Wesley, a writer of hymns. He was a real poet. Their works, no doubt, have occasional flashes of poetry, but their main object is didactic, devotional, theological. Not so the Christian Year, the Lyra Innocentium, or the Psalter. Very few of his verses can be used in public worship. His hymns are the exception. His originality lies in the fact that whilst the subjects which he touches are for the most part consecrated by religious usage or Biblical allusion, yet he grasps them not chiefly or exclusively as a theologian, or a Churchman, but as a poet. The Lyra Innocentium, whilst its more limited range of subjects, and perhaps its more subtle turn of thought, will always exclude it from the rank occupied by the Christian Year, has more of the true fire of genius, more of the true rush of poetic diction.

The Psalter again differs essentially from Sternhold and Hopkins, Tate and Brady, not merely in execution, but in design. It is the only English example of a rendering of Hebrew poetry by one who was himself a poet, with the full appreciation of the poetical thought as well as of the spiritual life which lies enshrined in the deep places of the Psalter. A striking instance of this is the version of the 93rd Psalm. The general subject of that Psalm must be obvious to every one in any translation, however meagre. But it required the magic touch of a kindred spirit to bring out of the rugged Hebrew sentences the splendour and beauty of the dashing and breaking waves, which doubtless was intended, though shrouded in that archaic tongue from less keen observers.

Keble was not a sacred but, in the best sense of the word, a secular poet. It is not David only, but the Sibyl, whose accents we catch in his inspirations. The "sword in myrtle drest" of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, "the many-twinkling smile of ocean" from Æschylus, are images as familiar to him as "Bethlehem’s glade" or "Carmel’s haunted strand." Not George Herbert, or Cowper, but Wordsworth, Scott, and perhaps more than all, Southey, are the English poets that kindled his flame, and coloured his diction.

The beautiful stanza, "Why so stately, maiden fair?" and the whole poem on "May Garlands," might have been written by the least theological of men. The allusions to nature are even superabundantly inwoven with the most sacred subjects. Occasionally a thought of much force and sublimity is lost by its entanglement in some merely passing phase of cloud or shadow. The descriptions of natural scenery display a depth of poetical intuition very rarely vouchsafed to any man. The exactness of the descriptions of Palestine, which he had never visited, have been noted and verified on the spot, as very few such descriptions ever have been. There are not above two or three failures, even in turns of expression.

An example of this minute accuracy is so striking as to deserve special record. Amongst the features of the Lake of Gennesareth, that which most arrests the attention is the belt of oleanders which surrounds its shores. But this remarkable characteristic had, as far as we know, entirely escaped the observation of all travelers before the beginning of this century; and, if we are not mistaken, the earliest published notice of it was in that line of the Christian Year —

  ‘All through the summer night,
Those blossoms red and bright—’

— by one who had never seen them, and who must have derived his knowledge of them from careful cross-examination of some traveler from the Holy Land. It was an instance of his curious shyness that, when complimented on this singular accuracy of description of the Holy Land, he replied, "It was by a happy accident."

Not less precise, if we knew exactly where to look for the original spots which suggested them, are his descriptions of the scenery of England.... Oxford, Bagley Wood, and the neighbourhood of Hursley, might, we are sure, be traced through hundreds of lines, both in the Christian Year and the Lyra Innocentium.

Though Keble’s pastoral life was retired and his ecclesiastical life narrow, as a poet he not only touched the great world of literature, but he was also a free-minded, free-speaking thinker. Both in form and in doctrine his poetry has a broad and philosophical vein, the more striking from its contrast to his opposite tendencies in connexion with his ecclesiastical party.

That eagerness to give the local colour of the sacred events, which runs through these volumes, is the ‘first step which costs everything’ in the attempt to treat these august topics historically, and not dogmatically.

  ‘The rude sandy lea,
Where stately Jordan flows by many a palm—’

         ‘Green lake, and cedar tuft, and spicy glade,
Shaking their dewy tresses now the storm is laid;’

         ‘The cell
In Kedron’s storied dell;’

         ‘The vaulted cells where martyr’d seers of old,
Far in the rocky walls of Sion sleep.’

The Biblical scenery is treated graphically as real scenery, the Biblical history and poetry as real history and poetry: the wall of partition between things sacred and things secular is broken down; the dogmatist, the allegorist, have disappeared; the critic and the poet have stepped into their place.

  ‘O for a sculptor’s hand,
  That thou might’st take thy stand,
Thy wild hair floating on the Eastern breeze.’
This is the true poetic fire of Gray’s ‘Bard,’ not the language of convention.
  ‘The moist pearls now bestrewing
  Thymy slope and rushy vale;
Comrades—what our sires have told us,
  Watch and wait, for it will come;
Not by manna showers at morning
  Shall our wants be then supplied;
But a strange pale gold adorning
  Many a tufted mountain side.’

This is the tone, not of the mystical commentator, but of the creative poet.

In doctrine too, whether in points distinctive of high Anglicanism or in those common to Christian controversialists in general, it is noticeable how the view of the poet transcends the view of the theologian. The beautiful poem of the ‘Waterfall’ in the Lyra Innocentium is a direct contradiction to the rigid opinions of its author, in his theological writings, on the hope expressed by Origen and Tillotson of the final restoration of lost souls. He speaks of the ancient world as Zwinglius or Spinoza regarded it, not as the scholastic divines spoke of it:—

  ‘Now of Thy love we deem,
  As of an ocean vast.
Mounting in tides against the stream
  Of ages gone and past.’
  
  ‘That warning still and deep,
At which high spirits of old would start
  Even from their pagan sleep.’

In direct opposition to the spirit which would make not moral excellence but technical forms of belief the test of safety he writes such verses as these—

  ‘—— In one blaze of charity
Care and remorse are lost, like motes in light divine;….
Whole years of folly we outlive
In His unerring sight, who measures Life by Love.’

         ‘“Lord, and what shall this man do?”
  Ask’st thou, Christian, for thy friend?
If his love for Christ be true,
  Christ hath told thee of his end:
This is he whom God approves,
This is he whom Jesus loves.’
  
‘Wouldst thou the life of souls discern?
  Nor human wisdom nor divine
Helps thee by aught beside to learn;
  Love is life’s only sign.’

Again, the doubts and difficulties, which in the rude conflict of theological controversy are usually ascribed to corrupt motives and the like, are treated in his "Ode on St. Thomas’s Day" with a tenderness worthy of the most advanced of modern thinkers:—

  ‘Is there on earth a spirit frail,
      Who fears to take their word;
    Scarce daring through the twilight pale
      To think he sees the Lord?
    With eyes too tremblingly awake
    To bear with dimness for His sake?
    Read and confess the Hand Divine
That drew thy likeness here so true in every line.’

And the beautiful analysis of the character and position of Barnabas, which is one of the masterpieces of Renan’s work on the Apostles, is all but anticipated in the lines on that saint in the Christian Year:—

  ‘Never so blest as when in Jesus’ roll,
      They write some hero-soul,
    More pleased upon his brightening road
To wait, than if their own with all his radiance glow’d.’

Such a keen discrimination of the gifts and relations of the Apostles belongs to the true modern element of theology, not to the conventional theories of former days.

And with regard to the more special peculiarities of the High Church school, it is remarkable how at every turn he broke away from them in his poetry. It is enough to refer to the justification of marriage as against celibacy in the "Ode on the Wednesday in Passion Week"; the glorification of the religion of common against conventual life in his "Morning Hymn", and in his "Ode on St. Matthew’s Day". The contending polemic schools have themselves called attention to the well-known lines on the Eucharist in the poem on "Gunpowder Treason". It is clear that, whatever may have been the subtle theological dogma which he may have held on the subject, the whole drift of that passage, which no verbal alteration can obliterate, is to exalt the moral and spiritual elements of that ordinance above those physical and local attributes on which later developments of his school have so exclusively dwelt.

These instances might be multiplied to any extent. It would, of course, be preposterous to press each line of poetry into an argument. But the whole result is to show how far nobler, purer, and loftier was what may be called the natural element of the poet’s mind, than the artificial distinctions in which he became involved as a partisan and as a controversialist. This is no rare phenomenon. Who has not felt it hard to recognise the author of the Paradise Lost and of the Penseroso in the polemical treatises On Divorce and On the Execution of Charles I? Who does not know the immeasurable contrast between Wordsworth the poet of nature and of the human heart, and Wordsworth the narrow Tory and High Churchman of his later years? In all these cases it is the poet who is the real man — the theologian and politician only the temporary mask and phase.

Recognition

Keble was elected Oxford Professor of Poetry without opposition in 1831, and held the post until 1841.

Mr. George Richmond, R.A., painted Keble's portrait in 1863. This picture belonged to the artist, but a replica by Mr. Richmond, dated 1876, is at Keble College.

There is a white marble bust of Keble – originally part of a more elaborate memorial – on a pillar on the west wall of Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Keble's feast day is kept on 14 July (the anniversary of his Assize Sermon) in the Church of England, and on 29 March (the anniversary of his death) elsewhere in the Anglican Communion.

2 lives of Keble have been written, by John Taylor Coleridge (1869), and by the Rev. Walter Lock (1895). In 1963 Georgina Battiscombe wrote a biography titled John Keble: A study in limitations.

His poem "Burial of the Dead" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Keble College

But Keble's chief monument is at Oxford. On 12 May 1866 it was resolved at a meeting at Lambeth Palace to raise in his memory a fund with which to build a college at Oxford to give at a moderate cost an education in strict fidelity to the Church of England. The erection of Keble College, which was opened in 1869, was the result.

Publications

Poetry

• The Christian Year: Thoughts in verse for the Sundays and holydays throughout the year. London & New York: Warne, Frederick, 1827; London & New York: Routledge, 1827; London: Frederick Stokes, 1827; London: James Nesbit, 1827; London: Cassell, Petter, & Galdin, 1827 Volume I, Volume II
  • 39th edition. London & Oxford, UK: John Henry Parker, 1850.
  • London: Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1940.
• Lyra Innocentium: Thoughts in verse on Christian children, their ways, and their privileges. Oxford, UK: John Henry Parker, 1846; New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1846.
• The Psalter, or Psalms of David: In English verse. London & Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1869.
• Miscellaneous Poems. London & Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1870.
• The Christian Year, Lyra Innocentium, and other poems. London: Oxford University Press, 1914.

Non-fiction

• Primitive Tradition Recognised in Holy Scripture: A sermon, preached in the Cathedral Church of Winchester, at the visitation of the Worshipful and Reverend William Dealtry, D.D., Chancellor of the Diocese, September 27, 1836. London: J., G., & F. Rivington, 1836.
• The Case of Catholic Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles Considered: With especial reference to the duties and difficulties of English Catholics in the present crisis, in a letter to the Hon. Mr. Justice Coleridge. London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1841.
• Sermons: Academical and occasional. Oxford, UK: John H. Parker / London: F. & J. Rivington, 1847.
• On Eucharistical Adoration: With considerations suggested by a late pastoral letter (1858) on the doctrine of the most holy Eucharist. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1867.
• Sermons: Occasional and parochial. Oxford, UK: John H. Parker / London: F. & J. Rivington, 1868.
• Letters of Spiritual Counsel and Guidance (edited by R.F. Wilson). London & Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1870.
• A Concordance to 'The Christian Year'. London & Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1871; New York: Pott & Amery, 1871.
• Sermons for the Christian Year. London & Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1875. Volume I: Lent to Passontide.
• Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1875.
• Sermons for the Holy Week. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1876.
• Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1876.
• Sermons for Ascension Day to Trinity Sunday. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1876.
• Studia sacra. Commentaries on the introductory verses of St. John's Gospel, and on a portion of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans; with other theological papers. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1877.
• Occasional Papers and Reviews. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1877.
• Sermons for Septuagesima to Ash-Wednesday: With sermons for confirmation and on the litany. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1879.
• Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1879.
• Outlines of Instruction; or, Meditations for the Church seasons. Oxford, UK: James Parker, 1880.
• Lectures on Poetry, 1832-1841. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1912.

Collected editions

• Selections from the Writings of John Keble. London & Edinburgh: Rivingtons, 1883.
• Maxims and Gleanings from the Writings of John Keble (selected by C.M. Smith). London & Edinburgh: Rivingtons, 1883.

Edited

• The Child's Christian Year: Hymns for every Sunday and Holy-Day, compiled for the use of parochial schools (compiled with Frances Mary Yonge). Oxford, UK: John Henry Parker / London: J.G. & F. Rivington, 1842; Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1842.

November By John Keble-0

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets
• List of English-language hymnists

Preceded by Henry Hart Milman

Oxford Professor of Poetry 1831-1841

Succeeded by James Garbett

References

•  Overton, John Henry (1892) "Keble, John" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 30 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 291-295  . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 15, 2017.
• The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (edited by F.L. Cross). Oxford University Press, 1957, p. 761.

External links

Poems

• "Burial of the Dead"
• 2 poems by Keble: "To a Thrush Singing in January," *Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity"
• Keble in the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse: "Balaam," " November"
• Kelble in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "Who Runs May Read," "Seed Time Hymn," "Holy Matrimony"
• John Keble info & 4 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Keble in The English Poets: An anthology: United States (from Lyra Apostolica), The Waterfall (from Lyra Innocentum)
  • Extracts from The Christian Year: Third Sunday in Lent, Second Sunday after Easter, Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, All Saint's Day
• John Keble at Hymnary (profile & 97 hymns)
• John Keble at PoemHunter (108 poems)

Books

• Works by John Keble at Project Gutenberg
• Christian Year at ccel.org
• Keble's works online at Project Canterbury
• John Keble at Amazon.com

About

• John Keble in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• John Keble 1792-1866 at The Cyber Hymnal
• Biographical sketch by James E. Kiefer
• John Keble, Priest, Poet, Renewer of the Church
• John Keble 1792-1866 at Project Canterbury
• John Keble: An essay on the author of 'The Christian Year' by John Campbell Shairp
• John Keble's Parishes: A history of Hursley and Otterbourne (edited by Charlotte M. Yonge), 1898.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Keble, John