Sellected letters of John Keats
E
Selected Letters of John Keats
E
Selected Letters of John Keats
r e v i s e d e d i t i o n
e d i t e d b y
g r a n t f . s c o t t
Based on the texts of Hyder Edward Rollins
h a r v a r d
u n i v e r s i t y
p r e s s
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.
II. Title.
PR4836 .A4 2002
821⬘.7—dc21
[B] 2001051862
E
c o n t e n t s
Preface xiii Editorial Procedures xv Acknowledgments xix Introduction xxi Events in the Life of John Keats xxxv Keats’s Correspondents 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
13 j. h. reynolds 17, 18 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15 leigh hunt
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 j. h. reynolds September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 fanny keats
31 j. h. reynolds 21 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
34
b. r. haydon
benjamin bailey 8 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
41 benjamin bailey 28–30 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 benjamin bailey
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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
65
b. r. haydon
10 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
george and tom keats 13, 19 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
b. r. haydon
23 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
john taylor
23 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
benjamin bailey 23 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
75 george and tom keats 23, 24 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 george and tom keats 30 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
82 john taylor
30 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
85 j. h. reynolds
3 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 george and tom keats 14 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
88 j. h. reynolds
19 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
george and tom keats
21 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
john taylor
27 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
benjamin bailey
13 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
j. h. reynolds
14 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
james rice
24 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
j. h. reynolds
25 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
b. r. haydon
8 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
j. h. reynolds
9 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
j. h. reynolds
17 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 john taylor
24 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
j. h. reynolds
27 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
j. h. reynolds
3 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
benjamin bailey 21, 25 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 benjamin bailey
tom keats 25–27 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 george and georgiana keats 27, 28 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 tom keats
fanny keats 2, 3, 5 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 tom keats 3, 5, 7, 9 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 j. h. reynolds 11, 13 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 tom keats 10, 11, 13, 14 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 tom keats 17, 18, 20, 21 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 benjamin bailey 18, 22 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 tom keats 23, 26 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 tom keats 3, 6 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 mrs. james wylie
6 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
fanny keats
19 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
c. w. dilke 20, 21 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 j. h. reynolds 22 (?) September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 j. a. hessey
8 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
fanny keats
26 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
richard woodhouse
27 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
george and georgiana keats 14, 16, 21, 24, 31 October . . . . . . . 196 james rice
24 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
b. r. haydon
22 December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
1819
george and georgiana keats 16–18, 22, 29 (?), 31 December 1818,
2–4 January 1819 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
b. r. haydon 10 (?) January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 fanny keats
b. r. haydon 18 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 fanny keats
27 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
b. r. haydon
8 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
fanny keats
13 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
joseph severn
29 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
fanny keats
31 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
fanny keats
12 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
b. r. haydon
13 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
fanny keats
1 May (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
george and georgiana keats 14, 19 February, 3 (?), 12, 13, 17,
19 March, 15, 16, 21, 30 April, 3, 4 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
miss jeffery
31 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
miss jeffery
9 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
fanny keats
9 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
b. r. haydon
17 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
fanny keats
17 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
fanny brawne
1 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
fanny keats
6 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
fanny brawne
8 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
j. h. reynolds
11 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
fanny brawne 15 (?) July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 fanny brawne
c. w. dilke (with charles brown)
31 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
fanny brawne 5, 6 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 benjamin bailey
14 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
fanny brawne
16 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
john taylor
23 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
j. h. reynolds
24 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
fanny keats
28 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
john taylor
31 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
j. a. hessey
5 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
john taylor
5 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
fanny brawne
13 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
john taylor (from richard woodhouse)
19, 20 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 j. h. reynolds
richard woodhouse 21, 22 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 charles brown
22 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
c. w. dilke
22 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
charles brown
23 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
george and georgiana keats 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25,
27 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
c. w. dilke
1 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
b. r. haydon (with charles brown)
3 October . . . . . . . . . . . 386
fanny brawne
11 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
fanny brawne
13 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
fanny brawne
19 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
fanny keats 26 (?) October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 william haslam
2 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
joseph severn
15 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
john taylor
17 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
james rice December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396 fanny keats
20 December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
1820
georgiana wylie keats 13, 15, 17, 28 January . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 fanny brawne 4 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 fanny keats
6 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
fanny keats
8 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
fanny brawne 10 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 fanny keats
14 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 james rice 14, 16 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 fanny brawne February (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 fanny brawne 24 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 fanny brawne 27 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 j. h. reynolds
fanny brawne 28 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 fanny brawne 29 (?) February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 fanny brawne
1 March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
c. w. dilke
4 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430 fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432 fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434 fanny keats
20 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 fanny brawne March (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436 mrs. james wylie 24 (?) March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 fanny keats
1 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
fanny keats
12 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
fanny keats
21 April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
fanny keats
4 May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
fanny brawne May (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 fanny brawne June (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 john taylor 11 (?) June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 charles brown about 21 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 fanny keats
23 June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
fanny brawne
4 July (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
fanny brawne
5 July (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
fanny keats
5 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
william haslam (from joseph severn) 12 (?) July . . . . . . . . . 453 fanny keats
22 July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
john keats (from percy bysshe shelley)
27 July . . . . . . . . . 455
fanny brawne August (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 fanny keats
13 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
john taylor
13 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
leigh hunt 13 (?) August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 john taylor
14 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
charles brown
14 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
percy bysshe shelley
16 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
charles brown August (?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 fanny keats
23 August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
fanny keats
11 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
william haslam (from joseph severn)
19 September . . . . . . . 468
william haslam (from joseph severn)
21 September . . . . . . . 470
charles brown
william haslam (from joseph severn)
22 October . . . . . . . . 476
mrs. samuel brawne 24 (?) October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 charles brown 1, 2 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 william haslam (from joseph severn) 1, 2 November . . . . . . 481 ? (from dr. james clark)
27 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
charles brown
30 November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
charles brown (from joseph severn) 14, 17 December . . . . . 487 john taylor (from joseph severn)
24 December . . . . . . . . . . 490
1821
? (from dr. james clark)
mrs. samuel brawne (from joseph severn)
11 January . . . . . 498
william haslam (from joseph severn)
15 January . . . . . . . . . 501
john taylor (from joseph severn) 25, 26 January . . . . . . . . . 504 william haslam (from joseph severn)
22 February . . . . . . . . 507
john taylor (from joseph severn)
6 March . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510
william haslam (from charles brown)
18 March . . . . . . . . 512
william haslam (from joseph severn)
5 May . . . . . . . . . . . 513 Index 517
E
i l l u s t r a t i o n s
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.
73 Map of Keats’s 1818 walking tour. Reproduced with the permission of Yale Univer- sity Press. 133
Silhouette of Fanny Brawne, by August Edouart. Reproduced with the Permission
of the Corporation of London. 223The 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 Li- brary, Harvard University. 296–297Joseph Severn, by John Partridge (pencil, 1825). Reproduced with the permission of
the National Portrait Gallery, London. 469Fanny Brawne (ambrotype, ca. 1850). Reproduced with the permission of the Cor-
poration of London. 478Deathbed portrait of Keats, by Joseph Severn (pen and ink, 1821). Reproduced with
the permission of the Corporation of London. 509John Keats at Wentworth Place, by Joseph Severn (oil on canvas, 1821–1823). Repro-
duced with the permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London. 515
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p r e f a c e
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 revi- sion, the present selection differs from Rollins in one other important re- gard: it is not a rigorously scholarly edition. This means that it does not in- clude 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 re- ducing 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- 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 pains- taking detail, by Keats’s deathbed companion, Joseph Severn. These letters are poignant, agonizing, and riveting in the extreme, and I believe their in- clusion 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 addi- tional 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 fa- mous journal letter of 14 February–4 May 1819 to his brother and sister-in- law 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 transla- tions for the two dozen or so foreign words and phrases that Keats sprin- kled 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.
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e d i t o r i a l p r o c e d u r e s
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: Let-
ters 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 transla- tions and interpretations of the originals. As he says, these editions “print the texts in conventional typography and with standard headings, justi- fied margins, uniform spacing between letters, words, and lines, and a gen- erous 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 pro- duction in book format and the neat chronological ordering and arrange- ment 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- tions of handwriting, and thus regularize letters and words that in the origi- nals 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 pic- tures in the margins. They must also do without the tactile elements of a letter, sacrificing everything from its contours and creases to its smell. Per- haps 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 prac- tical 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 fea- tures 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 ap- pearance 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., sup- plying missing letters and punctuation, correcting transposed letters), add- ing terminal punctuation to sentences that lack them, and converting many of Keats’s dashes to full stops. I have omitted Keats’s deletions and cancella- tions, 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 mat- ters of punctuation and spelling. In places where the punctuation appears 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 re- tained 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 insig- nificant 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 allit- erative 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 re- fer 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 dif- ficulty writing the letter r, for instance, and could never manage the word “perhaps,” which invariably came out “Perphaps.” In any event, I have de- cided to retain capital letters because they do not in general affect readabil- ity and because readers may find them significant.
By the same token, I have left all words that would normally be cap- italized (“Sunday,” “Isle of Wight,” “England”) in lowercase letters, accord- ing 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, for example, Keats speaks disparagingly of Devonshire men, seldom dig- nifying them with a D and dismissing them as “dwindled englishmen.” The same is true of the French, whom Keats frequently relegates to the low- ercase, adding insult to injury by referring on one occasion to “french Meadows” and on another to a “french Ambassador,” whose picture he dis- cards in favor of “a head” of the properly uppercase “Shakespeare.” Words- worth 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 op- erates on more than one level. To alter expressions such as these, I believe, would be to misrepresent Keats’s intentions.
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a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
My first and largest debt is to Jack Stillinger, whose editorial wisdom, gen- erosity, 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 transla- tions 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 re- search 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.
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i n t r o d u c t i o n
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 az- ure-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 contradic- tion or, as he says, “remain content with half knowledge” (21, 27 [?] Decem- ber 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 Ca- pability, the Chameleon Poet, the Vale of Soul-making, the Mansion of Many Apartments—appear only once. They are neither repeated to other 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, espe- cially next to the polished, anthology-ready gems of his poetry, is their un- predictability. In The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, T. S. Eliot re- marked 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 “Nega- tive Capability” letter is not so much the term itself, though it has gener- ated 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 espe- cially in Literature and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncer- tainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and rea- son.” Yet the sentence that immediately precedes this one is marvelously or- dinary, providing not a clue of what is about to follow: “Brown and Dilke walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime” (21, 27 [?] De- cember 1817).
The proximity of the mundane and the profound leads to another sa- lient 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 in- telligence 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 car- ried 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 au- thentic living. Such a belief makes Keats’s letters all the more astonishing for their insistence that there need be no distinction between living and 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 knowl- edge 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 shoul- ders are fledged, and we go thro’ the same air and space without fear.” Only in tandem do “high Sensations” and “knowledge” equip the human crea- ture 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 hu- man 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 origi- nal 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 con- texts, 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- etry,” he admits to Reynolds; “half the day will not do, the whole of it.” Po- etry 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 read- ing 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 peo- ple’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 po- ems “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).