So Bright and Delicate

So Bright and Delicate

John Keats died aged just twenty-five. He left behind some of the most exquisite and moving verse and love letters ever written, inspired by his great love for Fanny Brawne. Although they knew each other for just a few short years and spent a great deal of that time apart - separated by Keats' worsening illness, which forced a move abroad - Keats wrote again and again about and to his love, right until his very last poem, called simply "To Fanny". She, in turn, would wear the ring he had given her until her death. "So Bright and Delicate" is the passionate, heartrending story of this tragic affair, told through the private notes and public art of a great poet.

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John Keats was born in October 1795. His Poems appeared in 1817. Endymion was published in 1818. In 1818 he also worked on the powerful epic fragment Hyperion, and in 1819 he wrote The Eve of St Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, the major odes, Lamia, and the deeply exploratory Fall of Hyperion. Keats was already unwell when preparing the 1820 volume for the press; by the time it appeared in July he was desperately ill. He died in Rome in 1821. Keats's final volume did receive some contemporary critical recognition, but it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that his place in English Romanticism began to be recognized, and not until this century that it became fully recognized.