OUT OF PRINT!

Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography

W.W. Norton & Co., 2008

Slowly dying of tuberculosis, the poet Keats wrote to his beloved Fanny Brawne that he had “a habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.” Hence the words adopted for the title of Stanley Plumly’s biography. Plumly, a renowned poet in his own right, has written a poetically profound, meticulously researched and adoring book about his lifelong hero John Keats, one of the great romantic poets who died at the age of twenty-five (1795-1821).

Plumly delves into Keats’ relationship with Fanny Brawne and his oh-so-famous love letters to her. He traces the steps of Keats’ last journey to Rome as a hopeful cure for his illness, and we learn he died in a little room a stone’s throw from the Spanish Steps with his friend Severn at his bedside.

In addition to this biography, Plumly wrote a touching poem also titled “Posthumous Keats” about Keats’ and Severn’s journey to Rome. For Keats it was not a Grand Tour, but a last tour.

Available for puchase on AbeBooks

https://www.abebooks.com/9780393337723/Posthumous-Keats-Personal-Biography-Plumly-0393337723/plp