Fanny Brawne

During her lifetime, Fanny Brawne's identity as Keats's great love remained a secret to all but her family and a few friends. When their connection became public, she was vilified by the review establishment as cruel, shallow and unfaithful, a heartless flirt unworthy of a great poet. Keats had destroyed her love letters in the interest of concealing their relationship, and thanks to the petty god of prudery that ruled certain Victorians’ sensibilities, the burning of Keat’s correspondence left her bereft of any true champion. This is an authoritative biography, despite being the merest skeleton of the person who was Fanny Brawne. Reconstructed from Keat’s letters to Fanny, her letters to Fanny Keats, legal documents, parish records, and residential directories, along with extensive research into the places she lived, it offers a remarkably complete picture of Fanny Brawne's life.