Letter #101: To Fanny Keats, 5 November 1818

Like other letters to Fanny Keats from this period, today’s letter is a brief one explaining Keats’s ongoing dispute with Richard Abbey about visiting Fanny. (For other discussions of the topic, see these earlier posts.) Given what we know about Tom’s looming fate, it’s hard not to view Abbey in an even more villainous light than that in which he usually shines. As Tom’s health worsened throughout November 1818, the last month of his life, it became even harder for Keats to visit Fanny in Walthamstow. Not only was she kept from visiting her brothers at Well Walk; John could not come to her as well. At least we know that he kept his sister in mind and let her know of his solicitude via letter.

You can read today’s letter in Forman’s 1895 edition of the letters. Along with most of the other extant letters to Fanny Keats, today’s resides at the British Library.

Keats’s 5 November 1818 letter to Fanny Keats. Via Forman’s 1895 single-volume edition.