John Keats on the Appian way

Abstract

John Keats's voyage to Italy and death at Rome are enshrined in Anglo Italian Romantic mythology. Recounted in letters and memoirs, those events are also day-to-day realities that biographers have to reconcile with the 'halo effect' captured in Joseph Severn's famous sketch of the dying poet. Accounts of life aboard the Maria Crowther in autumn 1820 are generally done well, thanks to Severn's record of dreadful accommodation, stormy weather, and the tubercular Miss Cotterell who was also in quest of a cure. With Keats arrival at Naples the end is in sight, and biographical narratives accelerate from this point onwards: in a few sentences Robert Gittings and Andrew Motion whisk Keats through a week at Naples, up to Rome, and onto his deathbed.