His critical work, especially The Burden of the Past and the English Poet, responds to and anticipates some aspects of the work of Harold Bloom. His biographies of Keats and Johnson have enjoyed extraordinary reputations both as scholarly resources and as works of literature in their own right.
^Robert D. Richardson, Splendor of Heart: Walter Jackson Bate and the Teaching of Literature; with an interview by John Paul Russo (Boston: Godine, 2014).