Sellected letters of john keats

E
Selected Letters of John Keats



E
Selected Letters of John Keats
revised edition

edited by

grant f. scott
Based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins

harvard
university
press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England


Copyright © 1958 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Copyright © renewed 1986 by Herschel C. Baker,
the Executor of the author Hyder Edward Rollins
Copyright © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2005
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keats, John, 1795–1821.

[Correspondence. Selections]
Selected letters of John Keats / edited by Grant F. Scott.—Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: The letters of John Keats, 1814–1821. 1958.
“Based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-00749-2 (cloth)
ISBN 0-674-01841-9 (pbk.)
1. Keats, John, 1795–1821—Correspondence.
2. Poets, English—19th century—Correspondence.
I. Scott, Grant F. II. Title.
PR4836 .A4 2002
821Ј.7—dc21
[B]
2001051862


E
contents

Preface xiii
Editorial Procedures

xv

Acknowledgments xix
Introduction xxi
Events in the Life of John Keats
Keats’s Correspondents

xxxv

xxxix

l e t t e r s , 1816–1821
1816–1817
c. c. clarke September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
c. c. clarke 9 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
c. c. clarke 31 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
b. r. haydon 20 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
c. c. clarke 17 December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
j. h. reynolds 17 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
george and tom keats 15 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
j. h. reynolds 17, 18 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
leigh hunt 10 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
b. r. haydon 10, 11 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
taylor and hessey 16 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
taylor and hessey 10 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
jane and mariane reynolds 4 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28


vi

c o n t e n ts

j. h. reynolds September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
fanny keats 10 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
j. h. reynolds 21 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
b. r. haydon 28 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

benjamin bailey 8 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
benjamin bailey 28–30 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
benjamin bailey 3 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
benjamin bailey 22 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
j. h. reynolds 22 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
george and tom keats 21, 27 (?) December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

1818
george and tom keats 5 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon 10 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
george and tom keats 13, 19 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon 23 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 23 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
benjamin bailey 23 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
george and tom keats 23, 24 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
george and tom keats 30 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 30 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 3 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
george and tom keats 14 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 19 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
george and tom keats 21 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 27 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
benjamin bailey 13 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 14 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
james rice 24 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 25 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon 8 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 9 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 17 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65
69
70
72
74
75
79
82
85
86
88
92
94
96
98
101
104
107
111
113
115


vii

c o n t e n ts

john taylor 24 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 27 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 3 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

benjamin bailey 21, 25 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
benjamin bailey 10 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tom keats 25–27 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
george and georgiana keats 27, 28 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tom keats 29 June, 1, 2 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 2, 3, 5 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tom keats 3, 5, 7, 9 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 11, 13 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tom keats 10, 11, 13, 14 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tom keats 17, 18, 20, 21 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
benjamin bailey 18, 22 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tom keats 23, 26 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tom keats 3, 6 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
mrs. james wylie 6 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 19 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
c. w. dilke 20, 21 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 22 (?) September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. a. hessey 8 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 26 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
richard woodhouse 27 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
george and georgiana keats 14, 16, 21, 24, 31 October . . . . . . .
james rice 24 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon 22 December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

116
118
120
126
128
130

135
138
142
148
152
156
162
168
173
179
185
187
189
191
192
193
194
196
209
210

1819
george and georgiana keats 16–18, 22, 29 (?), 31 December 1818,
2–4 January 1819 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon 10 (?) January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 11 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon 18 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

215
238

239
241


viii

c o n t e n ts

fanny keats 27 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon 8 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 13 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
joseph severn 29 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 31 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 12 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon 13 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 1 May (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
george and georgiana keats 14, 19 February, 3 (?), 12, 13, 17,
19 March, 15, 16, 21, 30 April, 3, 4 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
miss jeffery 31 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
miss jeffery 9 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 9 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon 17 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 17 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 1 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 6 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 8 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 11 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 15 (?) July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 25 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
c. w. dilke (with charles brown) 31 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

fanny brawne 5, 6 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
benjamin bailey 14 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 16 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 23 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 24 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 28 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 31 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. a. hessey 5 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 5 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 13 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor (from richard woodhouse)
19, 20 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

242
243
244
246
247
249
250
252
254
301
303
305
306
307
308
310
312

314
315
317
319
321
323
324
327
329
330
332
333
334
338
339


ix

c o n t e n ts

j. h. reynolds 21 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
richard woodhouse 21, 22 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
charles brown 22 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
c. w. dilke 22 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
charles brown 23 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
george and georgiana keats 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25,
27 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
c. w. dilke 1 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
b. r. haydon (with charles brown) 3 October . . . . . . . . . . .

fanny brawne 11 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 13 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 19 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 26 (?) October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
william haslam 2 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
joseph severn 15 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 17 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
james rice December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 20 December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

344
347
353
355
358
359
385
386
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397

1820
georgiana wylie keats 13, 15, 17, 28 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

fanny brawne 4 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 6 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 8 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 10 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 14 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
james rice 14, 16 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

403
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
417
418
419
420
421


x

c o n t e n ts

fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 24 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 27 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
j. h. reynolds 28 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 28 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 29 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 1 March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
c. w. dilke 4 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 20 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
mrs. james wylie 24 (?) March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 1 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 12 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 21 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 4 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne May (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne June (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 11 (?) June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
charles brown about 21 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 23 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne 4 July (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

fanny brawne 5 July (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 5 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
william haslam (from joseph severn) 12 (?) July . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 22 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john keats (from percy bysshe shelley) 27 July . . . . . . . . .
fanny brawne August (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

422
423
424
425
426
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442

444
446
447
449
449
450
452
453
454
455
457


xi

c o n t e n ts

fanny keats 13 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 13 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
leigh hunt 13 (?) August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
john taylor 14 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
charles brown 14 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
percy bysshe shelley 16 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
charles brown August (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 23 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fanny keats 11 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
william haslam (from joseph severn) 19 September . . . . . . .
william haslam (from joseph severn) 21 September . . . . . . .
charles brown 30 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
william haslam (from joseph severn) 22 October . . . . . . . .

mrs. samuel brawne 24 (?) October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
charles brown 1, 2 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
william haslam (from joseph severn) 1, 2 November . . . . . .
? (from dr. james clark) 27 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
charles brown 30 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
charles brown (from joseph severn) 14, 17 December . . . . .
john taylor (from joseph severn) 24 December . . . . . . . . . .

458
459
460
461
462
463
465
466
467
468
470
474
476
477
479
481
484
485
487
490

1821

? (from dr. james clark) 3 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
mrs. samuel brawne (from joseph severn) 11 January . . . . .
william haslam (from joseph severn) 15 January . . . . . . . . .
john taylor (from joseph severn) 25, 26 January . . . . . . . . .
william haslam (from joseph severn) 22 February . . . . . . . .
john taylor (from joseph severn) 6 March . . . . . . . . . . . . .
william haslam (from charles brown) 18 March . . . . . . . .
william haslam (from joseph severn) 5 May . . . . . . . . . . .
Index

517

497
498
501
504
507
510
512
513


E
illustrations

Haydon’s life mask of Keats (plaster cast, 1816). Reproduced with the permission of
the National Portrait Gallery, London.
11
Opening page of Keats’s crossed letter to Benjamin Bailey, 22 November 1817 (Ms
Keats 1.16). Reproduced with the permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard

University.
53
Haydon’s drawings of Keats’s Head (pen and ink, 1816). Reproduced with the permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
73
Map of Keats’s 1818 walking tour. Reproduced with the permission of Yale University Press.
133
Silhouette of Fanny Brawne, by August Edouart. Reproduced with the Permission
of the Corporation of London.
223
The last leaf of Keats’s journal letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 14 February–4
May 1819 (Ms Keats 1.53). Reproduced with the permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
296–297
Joseph Severn, by John Partridge (pencil, 1825). Reproduced with the permission of
the National Portrait Gallery, London.
469
Fanny Brawne (ambrotype, ca. 1850). Reproduced with the permission of the Corporation of London.
478
Deathbed portrait of Keats, by Joseph Severn (pen and ink, 1821). Reproduced with
the permission of the Corporation of London.
509
John Keats at Wentworth Place, by Joseph Severn (oil on canvas, 1821–1823). Reproduced with the permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
515


E
preface

The selection of Keats’s letters gathered here is based on Hyder E. Rollins,
The Letters of John Keats, 1814–1821 (2 vols., Harvard University Press, 1958),
which is still considered the standard edition. Although nominally a revision, the present selection differs from Rollins in one other important regard: it is not a rigorously scholarly edition. This means that it does not include the detailed textual apparatus that has become a common feature of

all diplomatic editions of personal letters for the last century. Rather, the
letters have been edited for readability and with a more general audience
in mind. My intent has been to make Keats’s letters more accessible by reducing the scholarly annotations and by modernizing such features as
punctuation and spelling. In doing so, I have hoped to recreate some of
the spontaneity with which these letters were originally written as well
as the excitement with which they were received. Keats’s letters are some of
the most lively and creative in the language, and they deserve to have a
larger audience. There is no such edition of the letters currently in print,
and this represents a serious gap.
The present volume differs from existing editions of Keats’s letters not
only in editorial procedures, which I shall discuss in more detail, but also in
a number of other features. I have included a handful of letters to Keats and
among his friends in an effort to lend further perspective to the portrait of
Keats. This chorus of voices greatly enriches our sense of Keats’s character
and provides an illuminating contrast in epistolary styles. It also offers us a
revealing glimpse of his “posthumous existence,” the period of Keats’s ill-


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p re fac e

ness in Italy. Most editions close with the poet’s last letter, written to
Charles Brown at the end of November 1820. But Keats goes on living for
another three months, and this period is faithfully recorded, often in painstaking detail, by Keats’s deathbed companion, Joseph Severn. These letters
are poignant, agonizing, and riveting in the extreme, and I believe their inclusion here will deepen the reader’s understanding of the Keats story. For
similar reasons I have also included letters from Dr. James Clark, Percy
Bysshe Shelley, and Richard Woodhouse, all of which offer valuable additional testimony concerning Keats the man.
No new edition of the letters has appeared in over thirty years, and this
alone is reason enough for the present volume. During this time two new

Keats letters, along with the final page of an important journal letter, have
come to light. These include the letter of 30 January 1818 to his brothers;
the letter of 2 November 1819 to William Haslam; and the last leaf of the famous journal letter of 14 February–4 May 1819 to his brother and sister-inlaw in America. I have printed these here in addition to Keats’s verse epistle
of September 1816 to Charles Cowden Clarke, which Rollins knew of but
decided against printing (he published the slightly different version that
Keats used in his Poems of 1817). I have also corrected a number of Rollins’s
minor errors having to do with names and dates and have provided translations for the two dozen or so foreign words and phrases that Keats sprinkled throughout the letters (all in French, Italian, and Latin). Finally, I have
included ten illustrations that I hope will afford the reader a better sense of
the original manuscripts as well as the people and prominent locations in
Keats’s life.


E
editorial procedures

If we did not already have scrupulously accurate transcripts of Keats’s letters
in Rollins’s edition and a paperback selection edited by Robert Gittings, the
appearance of the present book might seem unwarranted. As it is, both of
these editions are widely available and will continue to serve the needs of
scholars. Perhaps a stronger justification for the present book can be found
in the implicit assumption made by all modern scholarly editions: that of
exact fidelity to the original manuscript. In the foreword to John Keats: Letters from a Walking Tour (Grolier, 1995), Jack Stillinger makes a convincing
case for a “principled modernization” of Keats’s letters, arguing that in spite
of their claims to accuracy, scholarly editions already constitute translations and interpretations of the originals. As he says, these editions “print
the texts in conventional typography and with standard headings, justified margins, uniform spacing between letters, words, and lines, and a generous accompaniment of scholarly commentary” (xii). In this respect, they
significantly recast the originals, especially their visual appearance, their
“look” on the page. If we add to this uniformity the fact of their mass production in book format and the neat chronological ordering and arrangement of letters written to a variety of correspondents over a period of years,
we can see just how artificial the standard edition actually is.
It is worth dwelling on this point at more length. The great advantage of
conventional typography is its ability to reproduce ordinarily inaccessible

texts and disseminate them in inexpensive forms to a wide audience. The
drawback, of course, is that the resulting texts represent mechanical transla-


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e d i to r i a l p ro c e d u re s

tions of handwriting, and thus regularize letters and words that in the originals possess their own unique physical body. In a conventionally printed
letter, then, readers cannot experience the idiosyncrasies of Keats’s hand,
the loops and flourishes, the scorings out, the inkblots, the doodles or pictures in the margins. They must also do without the tactile elements of a
letter, sacrificing everything from its contours and creases to its smell. Perhaps a more serious shortcoming is the inability of modern typography to
capture what Keats called the “chequer work” of a “crossed” letter. To save
on postage, Keats frequently turned the sheet of paper on its side and added
another page of writing across the path of the first. This habit served a practical purpose, but it also resulted in palimpsests that are rich in graphic
meaning. In cases like this where the medium plays a significant role in the
message, the modern scholarly edition is helpless to render the unique features of Keats’s “living hand.”
By necessity, the present selection is also interpretive, though I have tried
to remain sensitive to the visual character of Keats’s letters by including two
facsimile illustrations as well as noting where he exploited the graphic appearance of his text for puns. In more specific terms, I have modernized the
texts of Keats’s letters by silently correcting small slips of the pen (e.g., supplying missing letters and punctuation, correcting transposed letters), adding terminal punctuation to sentences that lack them, and converting many
of Keats’s dashes to full stops. I have omitted Keats’s deletions and cancellations, reduced most superscripts to the line, incorporated all interlineations
into the regular text, and expanded a number of abbreviations. I have also
dispensed with square and other types of brackets within the texts and kept
the annotations to a minimum, paring Rollins’s notes considerably. For the
sake of clarity, I have created new paragraph divisions, usually where Keats
took up the same letter on a different day or started on a completely new
topic, and I have deleted all postmarks and addresses of correspondents
from the head and foot of each letter. Finally, the reader should note that
two kinds of notes appear in the texts, numbered, which are mine, and

asterisked, which belong to Keats or other correspondents.
I have made the occasional exception to these rules, specifically in matters of punctuation and spelling. In places where the punctuation appears


e d i to r i a l p ro c e d u re s

xvii

ambiguous, or where Keats appears to be deliberately taking advantage of
syntactical ambiguity, I have retained the original grammar and syntax.
This is also the case with a number of Keats’s misspellings, which can be
wonderfully spontaneous and creative. Apparent slips not only may contain
puns and double entendres, but also may provide us with a sense of how a
particular word sounded to Keats’s ear. For these reasons, I have either retained or footnoted the more inventive and suggestive misspellings, words
such as “rediculous,” “Lawers,” “philantrophy,” and “atchievements.”
Like his misspellings, Keats’s habit of capitalization is eccentric, but may
offer clues to his patterns of association and to his meaning. Thus, I have
retained all but a dozen or so capitalized nouns, regardless of how insignificant they may appear. (I have converted to lowercase a handful of verbs
and pronouns that appear to have been capitalized by accident.) The fact is
that Keats will often use capital letters to emphasize significant phrases
(“Nest of Debauchery,” “Mouth of Fame,” “Cliff of Poesy”), highlight alliterative groupings of words (“I must endeavor to lose my Maidenhead with
respect to money Matters”), and even signal an internal rhyme (“A doze
upon a Sofa does not hinder it, and a nap upon Clover engenders ethereal
finger-pointings”). He almost always capitalizes nouns relating to family or
social status (“Brother,” “Sister,” “Lady”), important abstract nouns (“Life,”
“Mind,” “World,” “Genius,” “Beauty,” “Imagination”), and words that refer to the fine arts, especially literature (“Volumes,” “Verses,” “Stanzas,”
“Lines,” “Words,” “Laurels”). He tends to use the uppercase for the names
of animals, flowers, and the elements, and typically capitalizes words that
begin with Q or C. This may have been simply a personal tic; he had difficulty writing the letter r, for instance, and could never manage the word
“perhaps,” which invariably came out “Perphaps.” In any event, I have decided to retain capital letters because they do not in general affect readability and because readers may find them significant.

By the same token, I have left all words that would normally be capitalized (“Sunday,” “Isle of Wight,” “England”) in lowercase letters, according to Keats’s own manuscripts. Of course these may also be slips, but it is
just as likely that they indicate Keats’s sentiments on a particular subject
and that they are deliberate subversions of grammatical convention. Thus,


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e d i to r i a l p ro c e d u re s

for example, Keats speaks disparagingly of Devonshire men, seldom dignifying them with a D and dismissing them as “dwindled englishmen.”
The same is true of the French, whom Keats frequently relegates to the lowercase, adding insult to injury by referring on one occasion to “french
Meadows” and on another to a “french Ambassador,” whose picture he discards in favor of “a head” of the properly uppercase “Shakespeare.” Wordsworth comes off no better. In a famous letter to Richard Woodhouse, Keats
invents his own category to contain the Lake poet’s massive self-regard, the
“wordsworthian or egotistical sublime,” a phrase in which the belittling operates on more than one level. To alter expressions such as these, I believe,
would be to misrepresent Keats’s intentions.


E
acknowledgments

My first and largest debt is to Jack Stillinger, whose editorial wisdom, generosity, and good sense I have relied on throughout this project. This book
was initially his idea, and I am grateful to him for entrusting me with its
fruition. I also thank my colleagues at Muhlenberg College for their advice
and encouragement. Barri Gold, Alec Marsh, and David Rosenwasser read
a draft of my introduction and offered valuable criticism and commentary,
and Patricia DeBellis, Lisa Perfetti, and Robert Wind helped with translations of various foreign words and phrases. Fellow Keatsian Carol Kyros
Walker kindly sent me the map of Keats’s walking tour that she used in her
book, and Yale University Press granted permission for me to use it. I am
grateful as well to Donald B. Hoffman, whose sponsorship of a yearlong research fellowship allowed me valuable release time to devote to this book.
A nod toward the scholar’s home institution has become an obligatory

part of any sensible acknowledgment, but I would like to pay more than
customary thanks to Muhlenberg College, which, year after year, continues
to support my scholarly endeavors with summer grants, travel money, and
subventions. Without this institutional generosity, my task would have
been considerably more difficult.
Least in size but certainly not last in regard is Oliver J. S. Scott, to whom
I owe an odd sort of parental gratitude. If it were not for his booming wee
voice and the uncanny precision of his predawn awakenings, I would never
have been propelled into my office at this dim hour. I dedicate this book to
him and to Markéta—s láskou a vd’akou.



E
introduction

For most modern readers it is hard to see Keats’s poems for the sheen of
their language. They appear too much like bright monuments in winter
sun. No one, I suspect, could mistake a line like “And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep”—from “The Eve of St. Agnes”—for anything but poetry.
Indeed, Keats has come to represent the poet of “silken phrases and silver
sentences,” exploiting language, rhyme, and allusion in ways that terrify
students but thrill the ranks of professional scholars.
On first looking into Keats’s letters, however, readers who bring with
them some memory of the formal difficulty of his poems will be pleasantly
surprised. Rather than the stately elegance of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” or
the finely wrought agonies of “Ode to a Nightingale,” the letters yield
the spontaneous and frank observations of a young man: his insecurities,
doubts, fears, enthusiasms, prejudices, ambitions, opinions, and ideas. If
his greatest poems are characterized by their stillness and poise, his letters
are masterpieces of motion. They read like mountain rivers: ragged, rough,

full of raw energy, dangerous. They are alive with improvisational wit and
verbal gusto, revealing an agile mind happily willing to dwell in contradiction or, as he says, “remain content with half knowledge” (21, 27 [?] December 1817). Keats never commits his speculations to the casket of a theory. A
remarkable fact of the letters is that his most famous ideas—Negative Capability, the Chameleon Poet, the Vale of Soul-making, the Mansion of
Many Apartments—appear only once. They are neither repeated to other


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i n t ro d u c t i o n

correspondents nor formalized in published essays, but remain provisional,
bound within the specific human context of a letter.
Perhaps what is most surprising and delightful about Keats’s letters, especially next to the polished, anthology-ready gems of his poetry, is their unpredictability. In The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, T. S. Eliot remarked that the letters “are what letters ought to be; the fine things come in
unexpectedly, neither introduced nor shown out, but between trifle and
trifle” (100). And he is right. What is so striking about the famous “Negative Capability” letter is not so much the term itself, though it has generated hundreds of pages of commentary, as the casual way in which it
emerges out of the quotidian detail of Keats’s life. He goes to see a play,
mentions a publisher’s trial for libel, talks about dining out with friends,
and then—like a thunderclap—“I had not a dispute but a disquisition with
Dilke on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, and at
once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I
mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Yet the sentence that immediately precedes this one is marvelously ordinary, providing not a clue of what is about to follow: “Brown and Dilke
walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime” (21, 27 [?] December 1817).
The proximity of the mundane and the profound leads to another salient feature of Keats’s letters: their seamless integration of everyday life
with the life of the mind. Today we have grown accustomed to think of intelligence as necessitating a special time and place. Thinking is segregated
from other activities and has become the unique preserve of institutions
such as the university, the foundation, and the “think tank,” where it is carried out by a camera-friendly team of “experts” and “knowledge workers.”
In our time we have come to witness the complete professionalization of
the intellect as well as the allotment of designated time to “mental work.”
The weekends are now reserved for the strenuous fun that constitutes authentic living. Such a belief makes Keats’s letters all the more astonishing
for their insistence that there need be no distinction between living and

i n t ro d u c t i o n

xxiii

thinking; that thinking is living and in fact works best when it takes its
measure directly from life. “Axioms in philosophy,” he writes to his friend
John Hamilton Reynolds, “are not axioms until they are proved on our
pulses” (3 May 1818). This is one of the signs of Keats’s health: that he can
find no essential difference between the body and the mind, that such a
split would be unnatural, and that the mind’s activities are in every way as
sensuous and exhilarating as the body’s. In the same letter, Keats illustrates
the danger of separating body and mind in a metaphor that suggests a scene
out of Dante: “The difference of high Sensations with and without knowledge appears to me this: in the latter case we are falling continually ten
thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again without wings and with
all the horror of a bare-shouldered Creature. In the former case, our shoulders are fledged, and we go thro’ the same air and space without fear.” Only
in tandem do “high Sensations” and “knowledge” equip the human creature with wings capable of navigating the abyss.
If the letters show no embarrassment in mingling serious ideas with bits
of idle gossip, light-hearted banter, comments on women and the weather,
they also seem perfectly at ease with the inclusion of poetry—Keats’s own
and that of others. For those who have encountered Keats’s poems only in
weighty anthologies, it is refreshing to come upon them in this warmer human environment. In this context they seem to breathe again, to take on
new life and interest. Here the poems are not isolated aesthetic events or
solemn attempts at initiation into the “Temple of Fame” so much as natural
extensions of his ordinary existence. Some of Keats’s most supple and original sonnets—for example, “On the Sea,” “On Sitting Down to Read King
Lear Once Again,” “O thou whose face hath felt the winter’s wind,” “Four
seasons fill the measure of the year”—grow organically out of specific contexts, reflecting both the patterns of his thought at the moment of writing
and the interests of individual correspondents. His own commentary on
works such as “The Eve of St. Agnes” and “La Belle Dame sans Merci” is

also highly suggestive and serves to humanize poems that have become
dauntingly canonical. The happy marriage of poetry and prose in the letters
tells us that for Keats, poetry was not a job or a career but a necessity, like
breathing. “I find that I cannot exist without poetry, without eternal po-


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i n t ro d u c t i o n

etry,” he admits to Reynolds; “half the day will not do, the whole of it.” Poetry becomes a physical appetite, almost an addiction: “I began with a little,
but habit has made me a Leviathan.” If he cannot get his fix, either by reading or writing it, he becomes “all in a Tremble” (17, 18 April 1817).
This attitude will no doubt surprise the modern reader who has been
taught to see poetry like Keats’s as a luxury, to be classed with opera or
haute cuisine. Keats’s poetry—serious poetry—is not a part of most people’s workaday lives. It is a sign of his complexity that Keats too could share
this belief in poetry as an elite club; indeed, he once signed one of his poems “Caviare” and was fond of playing the connoisseur, even the collector,
of the beautiful. He notes, for instance, that “though a quarrel in the streets
is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine” (14 February–
4 May 1819), and on his walking tour with Charles Brown he relates to his
brother Tom their first sight of a Scottish country dancing school: “There
was as fine a row of boys and girls as you ever saw, some beautiful faces, and
one exquisite mouth” (29 June, 1, 2 July 1818).
But more often Keats saw a vital connection between poetry and the
“real world,” the world of suffering and misfortune that beset those closest
to him. “I am ambitious of doing the world some good,” he confesses to his
friend Richard Woodhouse, and he meant through his poetry. He begins his
adult life in training to be an apothecary, what we would consider today a
family doctor; he ends it determined to be a poet-physician, healing with
the balm of his words. Poetry is what Keats prescribes, but not exclusively
for spiritual health (as we might do today, insisting that it is “good for the

soul”); rather, he sees it as genuinely medicinal and therapeutic. In a memorable passage Keats concludes the early poem “I stood tiptoe” with a vision
of ethereal breezes reviving “the languid sick” as they lie feverish in their
hospital beds. “Springing up,” these invalids awake “clear eyed” to greet
their friends, their tongues “loos’d in poesy.” This powerfully vivid image
tells us that for Keats, poetry was both a cure for disease—those breezes
bear the burden of Apollo’s song—and a vital sign of a person’s health.
In his letters this association of poetry with health is made explicit on a
number of occasions. The poems are conceived not only as diversions or
amusements for his friends, but also as a means of speeding the time and