Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne: Written in the years MDCCCXIX and MDCCCXX and now given from the original manuscriptsKeats, John
General
Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne: Written in the years MDCCCXIX and MDCCCXX and now given from the original manuscripts
Keats, John
Brawne, Fanny, 1800-1865 -- Correspondence; Keats, John, 1795-1821 -- Correspondence; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence
Others also have busied themselves about Keats; and, since the foregoing
remarks were first published in 1878, Mr. J. G. Speed, a grandson of
George Keats, has identified himself with the contributor to the New York
_World_, alluded to at pages xlviii and xlix, in reissuing in America
Lord Houghton’s edition of Keats’s Poems, together with a collection of
letters.[19] This work, though containing one new letter, unhappily threw
no real light whatever either on the inconsistencies of text already
referred to or on any other question connected with Keats. Later,
Professor Sidney Colvin has issued, with a very different result, his
volume on Keats[20] included in the “English Men of Letters” series;
and I have not hesitated to use, without individual specification, such
illustrative facts as have become available, whether from Mr. Colvin’s
work or from my own edition of Keats’s whole writings,[21] which also
appeared some time after the publication of the Letters to Fanny Brawne,
though years before Mr. Colvin’s book.
Two letters, traced since the body of the present volume passed through
the press are added at the close of the series; and I have now reason to
think that the letter numbered XXVIII should precede that numbered XXV,
the date being probably the 23rd or 25th of February, 1820, rather than
the 4th of March as suggested in the foot-note at page 78.
The cousin of the Misses Reynolds whom Keats described as a Charmian was
Miss Jane Cox,[22] at least so I was most positively assured by Miss
Charlotte Reynolds in 1883.
It is now pretty clear that the intention to return to Winchester on
the 14th of September, 1819, was not carried out quite literally, and
that Keats really returned to that city on the 15th. In regard to
the foot-note at page 33, it should now be stated that, in a letter
post-marked the 16th of October, 1819, he speaks of having returned to
Hampstead after lodging two or three days in the neighbourhood of Mrs.
Dilke.
Having mentioned in the foot-note at page 101 that Keats had elsewhere
recorded himself and Tom as firm believers in immortality, I must now
state that the record cited was a garbled one. Lord Houghton, working
from transcripts furnished to him by the late Mr. Jeffrey, the second
husband of George Keats’s widow, printed the words “I have a firm belief
in immortality, and so had Tom.” The corresponding sentence in the
autograph letter is “I have scarce a doubt of an immortality of some kind
or another, neither had Tom.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account