D W Pryke

John Keats - A Youth Elect D W Pryke

In late October 1820, having sailed to Italy in the hope the warmer climate would improve his failing health, John Keats had to endure 10 days' strict quarantine in the Bay of Naples before being allowed to disembark. Those ten days provide a timescale and one half of this narrative in which Keats looks back on his life, his development as a poet, and the tragic love relationship with his nineteen year old fiancée Fanny Brawne. A second timescale, and the other half of the narrative, follows her interminably slow six weeks spent in Wentworth Place, Hampstead, waiting for news of Keats. During this period, she feels she has lost the man she loves, and she feels desperately isolated amongst Keats' small circle of friends, who, at best tolerate her, but never fully accept her. This is the story of John Keats' rise to prominence, not as a Romantic writer, but as a poet-hero in the Hermetic and Classical mould, one who feels compelled to explore the darker regions of the psyche in order to achieve the quest and discover true enlightenment. This is the story of Fanny Brawne, to whom history has been unkind, portraying her as a weak, insipid girl. Here, she is given a voice for the first time; here, she becomes the near equal partner of the poet himself. John Keats and Fanny Brawne - together, this is their story.