REMARKS
Note on Keats's critical reception: Of the works published during his lifetime, only Keats's final volume was well received. “Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems” (1820) was published just seven months before her death and was praised in “The Examiner” and “Edinburgh Review.” The positive feedback, however, was more of a sign of too little, too late. Keats was already in the throes of consumption, and his peers even came to attribute the illness to the critical assault he suffered over Endymion. This melodramatic and rather inaccurate myth was perpetuated by Byron (who claimed that Keats was "choked by an article"), by Percy Shelley (in his poem "Adonais") and by Keats's own tombstone; Against his will, Charles Brown and Joseph Severn included in the inscription that he died "under the malicious power of his enemies."
Note on Fanny Brawne's reputation: Brawne's reputation as a "flirt" has (surprisingly) been much debated by scholars. Some, for example, blamed the Victorians and their strict code of sexual propriety for exaggerating her flirtatious nature; When Keats's love letters were published in 1878, the respectable classes were scandalized by their passionate sentiment and quick to label Brawne a "bad influence" on the beloved poet. For a discussion of Brawne's reputation, see Bate, Keats, p.421-424.
THE REFERENCES
Epitaph: Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p.694.
Description of Keats's physical appearance: Bate, Keats, p.18, p.114-115.
Description of Keats' personality: Bate, Keats, 17-18 years old. Martin Halpern, “Keats and the Laughing Spirit,” Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 15, 1966, p.69.
Death of Edward Keats: Chronology published in John Keats, Selected Letters, ed. Robert Gittings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p.xxxix.
Deaths of Thomas Keats, Frances Jennings and Tom Keats: Chronology published in John Keats, Selected Poems, ed. John Barnard (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2007), p.ix-xii.
Emigration of George Keats: Chronology published in Keats, Selected Poems, ed. Barnard, p.xi.
Keats abandons his medical career: Kelvin Everest, entry: John Keats, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/, last accessed October 16.
Review of Endymion: John Wilson Croker, review of Keats' Endymion, The Quarterly Review, April 1818, http://www.lordbyron.org/doc.php?chooseJoCroke.1818.Keats.xml, last accessed on October 11, 2016.
Attacks on “The Cockney School of Poetry”: John Gibson Lockhart, “On the Cockney School of Poetry, No.I-VIII”, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October 1817 – July 1825, http://www.lordbyron.org/contents .php?docJoLockh.Cockney.Contents, last accessed October 11, 2016.
Description of Fanny Brawne's Personality: Jane Campion, Introduction, So Brilliant and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems from John Keats to Fanny Brawne (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2009), p.vii-viii.
Keats and Fanny Brawne are engaged: Chronology published in Keats, Selected Poems, p.xiii.
Financial problems impact marriage prospects: Bate, Keats, p.535.
Keats's journey to Rome and death: Bate, Keats, p.655-696.
“If I should die…”: Letter from John Keats to Fanny Brawne, February (?) 1820, Keats, Selected Letters, ed. Gittings, p.335.
Romanticism: MH Abrams, entry: Romantic Era, A Glossary of Literary Terms: Ninth edition (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009), p.255. The following introductory websites are useful (all last accessed October 11, 2016):
– https://masterworksbritlit.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/introduction-to-romanticism/
– http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html
– https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics
“I think I shall be…”: Letter from John Keats to George and Georgiana Keats, October 1818, Keats, Selected Letters, ed. Gittings, p.151.
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