Keats, Letters, Grief, and Delay 1818-1820

Abstract

Digital technologies offer a quick and convenient method of communicating across distance, but there are unique benefits to engaging in forms of delayed communication. Long-distance letter writing in the early nineteenth century was often a slow business, and one that Romantic poet, John Keats, capitalised on. In particular, the letter provided Keats with a means of managing the reality of his circumstances when he was faced with inexorable loss and tragedy. In the period of time leading up to the death of his brother, Tom, in 1818, Keats exploited the specific cultures and forms of letter writing to generate a unique consolation for himself and his family members; as he confronted the reality of his own death two years later, the letter played a similarly crucial role in managing his feelings of loss and grief. Letter writing, during these difficult periods, presented Keats with a unique dichotomy: the letter kept him grounded in the cruel reality of his situation while often functioning as a singularly effective means of managing it. How the specific cultures of letter writing and disease intersect, and how Keats’s imaginative epistolary narratives coalesce with the increasingly urgent facts of consumption and death, will be examined here.