Keats in Italy


Photograph Photograph

MS Keats 4.5.11. Presented by Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1970.

John Keats. Letter to Mrs. Samuel Brawne, Naples Harbour, 24 October [1820]. Transcribed by Charles Dilke.

In this letter to Fanny Brawne’s mother, Keats describes his and Severn’s voyage to Italy. Keats ended the letter with a farewell to Brawne, feeling he would never see her again.

This copy of Keat’s original letter was transcribed by Keats’s friend Charles Dilke, and is the only surviving version of the letter.

Give my Love to Fanny and tell her, if I were well there is enough in this Port of Naples to fill a quire of PaperI do not feel in the world…I dare not fix my Mind upon Fanny, I have not dared think of her. The only comfort I have had that way has been in thinking for hours together of having the knife she gave me put in the silver-case-the hair in a locket - and the Pocket Book in a gold net - Show her this. I dare say no more - Yet if you must not believe I am so ill as this Letter may look, for if ever there was a person born without the faculty of hoping I am he.

MS Keats 4.5.11.  John Keats. MS.L. (transcript) to Mrs. Samuel Brawne; Naples Harbour, 24 October [1820]. Presented by Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1970.