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
[31] The Tragedy referred to is, of course, _Otho the Great_, which
was composed jointly by Keats and his friend Charles Armitage
Brown. For the first four acts Brown provided the characters, plot,
&c., and Keats found the language; but the fifth act is wholly
Keats’s. See Lord Houghton’s _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848), Vol.
II, pp. 1 and 2, and foot-note at p. 333 of the Aldine edition of
Keats’s Poetical Works (Bell & Sons, 1876). A humorous account of
the progress of the joint composition occurs in a letter written by
Brown to Dilke, which is quoted at p. 9 of the memoir prefixed by
Sir Charles Dilke to _The Papers of a Critic_, referred to in the
Introduction to the present volume, p. lviii.
[32] He did not find one; for, in a letter to B. R. Haydon, dated
Winchester, 3 October, 1819, he says: “I came to this place in the
hopes of meeting with a Library, but was disappointed.” For this
letter see _Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk_
(Two volumes, Chatto and Windus, 1875), Vol. II, p. 16, and also
Lord Houghton’s _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848), Vol. II, p. 10, where
there is an extract from the letter somewhat differently worded and
arranged.
[33] The discrepancy between the date written by Keats and that
given in the postmark is curious as a comment on his statement
(_Life, Letters, &c._, 1848, Vol. I, p. 253) that he never knew the
date: “It is some days since I wrote the last page, but I never
know....”
[34] This word is of course left as found in the original
letter: an editor who should spell it _yacht_ would be guilty of
representing Keats as thinking what he did not think.
[35] Written, I presume, from the house of his friends and
publishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, No. 93, Fleet Street.
[36] Whether he carried out this intention to the letter, I know
not; but he would seem to have been at Winchester again, at all
events, by the 22nd of September, on which day he was writing
thence to Reynolds (_Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 23).
[37] It would seem to have been in this street that Mr. Dilke
obtained for Keats the rooms which the poet asked him to find in
the letter of the 1st of October, from Winchester, given at p.
16, Vol. II, of the _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848). How long Keats
remained in those rooms I have been unable to determine, to a
day; but in Letter No. IX he writes, eight days later, from Great
Smith Street (the address of Mr. Dilke) that he purposes “living
at Hampstead”; and there is a letter headed “Wentworth Place,
Hampstead, 17th Nov. [1819.]” at p. 35, Vol. II, of the _Life,
Letters, &c._
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