Book description
Published to coincide with the release of the film Bright Star,
written and directed by Oscar Winner Jane Campion (The Piano,
In the Cut), starring Abbie Cornish (Elizabeth: The
Golden Age) and Ben Whishaw (Brideshead Revisited, Perfume)
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.
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.
