Description
Book SynopsisThis biography of Joseph Severn (1793-1879), the best known but most controversial of Keats''s friends, is based on a mass of newly discovered information, much of it still in private hands. Severn accompanied the dying Keats to Italy, nursed him in Rome and reported on his last weeks there in a famous series of moving letters. After Keats''s death in relative obscurity, Severn pressed hard for an early biography and a more fitting memorial in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.In the nineteenth century Severn''s friendship with Keats was seen as a model of devoted masculine companionship and he was reburied by popular acclaim next to Keats in 1882. In the twentieth century, by contrast, he was denigrated as an unreliable, self-promoting witness. Sue Brown''s book fills a major gap in studies of Keats and his circle. It reassesses Severn''s character, friendship with Keats, and influence on the posthumous development of the poet''s fame and provides new information on Keats''s death.The s
Trade Reviewambitiously researched and richly detailed... [a] fine study * Robert Ryan, Keats Shelley Review *
Sue Brown's lively new biography of Severn will be an invaluable contribution to Romantic scholarship * Keats-Shelley Journal *
Crisply written and clear-sighted biography...in Sue Brown's hands he [Joseph Severn] becomes a cockney chancer, a charming maverick, a spinner of yarns whose name will never be writ in water. * Frances Wilson, Times Literary Supplement *
Sue Brown's is as full, fine and sensitive an account of his life as could be wished for * Ann Wroe, The Tablet *
a full-length, extremely readable, exquisitely documented biography * Jack Stillinger, Studies in Romanticism *
Careful, thorough, authoritative and scholarly, Brown's book can justly claim to be the first full - cradle to grave - biography * Bill St Clair, The Literary Review *
full of new material and insight... [Severn's] exchanges with an exasperated Foreign Office are worthy of a comic novel... Sue Brown's judicious biography, while giving Severn back his own Life, also sheds new light on Keats's 'Posthumous Life' * Pamela Neville-Sington, Romanticism *
This is an enjoyable biography which probes a fascinating character and provides a sound historical and cultural background * Leonee Ormond, The Burlington Magazine *
A balance portrait of Severn... This accessible book will interest Keats fans and scholars, and it will also attract readers interested in 19th-century British communities in Italy or in the sometimes-nasty British artistic community... Recommended. * Choice *
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. A Hazardous Childhood ; 2. The Royal Academy Student ; 3. Painter and Poet ; 4. The Warm South ; 5. Piazza di Spagna ; 6. 'Thanks Joe' ; 7. 'The Most Striking Year of My Life' ; 8. The RA Pensioner ; 9. 'Searching for Fame and Fortune' ; 10. Love, Marriage, and Persecution ; 11. 'Everybody's Man and a Very Obliging Creature': Severn in his Roman Prime ; 12. Going Home ; 13. The Passion for Fresco ; 14. The Friend of Keats ; 15. An Interlude in Pimlico ; 16. British Consul ; 17. The New Rome ; 18. Keeper of the Flame ; 19. A Fitting Place
