Keats’s Dolphins

The word ‘dolphin’ appears seven times in Keats’s poetry. This essay sets those occurrences in the context of eighteenth-century discussions of the dolphin in works of natural history, as well as the creature’s rich history in Classical myth. It suggests that William Falconer’s maritime epic The Shipwreck was an important influence on the Romantics’ interest in the dolphin, and explains why their poetical dolphins sometimes exhibit apparently miraculous qualities.