Simply as Editor

Abstract Chapter 7 aims to demonstrate for modern readers Milnes’s extraordinary achievement in creating the first life of John Keats: time had, for the moment, ensured that many of Keats’s friends were still alive and willing to contribute. Had Milnes delayed by just a few more months, however, his in-person sources would have rapidly diminished—Benjamin Haydon committed suicide on 22 June 1846, John Hamilton Reynolds died on 15 November 1852, and Benjamin Bailey followed on 25 June 1853. The closing pages of this chapter extract from the author’s survey of Milnes’s book the building blocks from which he assembled his narrative: the poems, letters, and other sources that, as Milnes modestly observed, amounted to ‘the Life … already written’. Milnes’s book continues to be foundational for modern understandings of Keats, and its publication in 1848 set Keats’s reputation securely on an upward curve.