Victorian scholar Michael Wheeler calls The Christian Year simply "the most popular volume of verse in the nineteenth century".

[6] In his essay on Tractarian Aesthetics and the Romantic Tradition, Gregory Goodwin claims that The Christian Year is "Keble's greatest contribution to the Oxford Movement and to English literature."

As evidence, Goodwin cites E. B. Pusey's report that 95 editions of this devotional text were printed during Keble's lifetime, and "at the end of the year following his death, the number had arisen to a hundred-and-nine".

Despite its widespread appeal among the Victorian readers and the familiarity of certain well-known hymns, the popularity of Keble's The Christian Year faded in the 20th century.

[7] To the same college friend, he was indebted for an introduction to Robert Southey, whom he found to be "a noble and delightful character," and the writings of the three, especially Wordsworth, had much to do with the formation of Keble's own mind as a poet.

Extracts from a number of his verses found their way into popular collections of Hymns for Public Worship, such as "The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden",[9] "Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear",[10] Blest are the pure in heart and New every morning is the love.

Lyra Innocentium was being composed while Keble was stricken by what he always seems to have regarded as the great sorrow of his life, the decision of Newman to leave the Church of England for Catholicism.

[2] Keble died in Bournemouth on 29 March 1866 at the Hermitage Hotel, after visiting the area to try and recover from a long-term illness as he believed the sea air had therapeutic qualities.

Though shy and awkward with strangers, he was happy and at ease among his friends, and their love and sympathy drew out all his droll playfulness of wit and manner....

His head, says Mozley, 'was one of the most beautifully formed heads in the world,' the face rather plain-featured, with a large unshapely mouth, but the whole redeemed by a bright smile which played naturally over the lips; and under a broad and smooth forehead he had 'clear, brilliant, penetrating eyes which lighted up quickly with merriment kindled into fire in a moment of indignation.... a quiet country clergyman, with a very moderate income, who sedulously avoided public distinctions, and held tenaciously to an unpopular School all his life.

Keble's mind was, by long, patient and affectionate study of Scripture, so imbued with it that its language, its train of thought, its mode of reasoning, seems to flow out into his poetry, almost, one should think, unconsciously to himself.