Joseph Severn, A Life
Joseph Severn, A Life

Author: Sue Brown

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2009-10-08

Total Pages: 651

ISBN-13: 0191609870

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This biography of Joseph Severn (1793-1879), the best known but most controversial of Keats's friends, is based on a mass of newly discovered information, much of it still in private hands. Severn accompanied the dying Keats to Italy, nursed him in Rome and reported on his last weeks there in a famous series of moving letters. After Keats's death in relative obscurity, Severn pressed hard for an early biography and a more fitting memorial in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. In the nineteenth century Severn's friendship with Keats was seen as a model of devoted masculine companionship and he was reburied by popular acclaim next to Keats in 1882. In the twentieth century, by contrast, he was denigrated as an unreliable, self-promoting witness. Sue Brown's book fills a major gap in studies of Keats and his circle. It reassesses Severn's character, friendship with Keats, and influence on the posthumous development of the poet's fame and provides new information on Keats's death. The significance of Severn's artistic career has previously been downplayed. This book offers the first full assessment of his work and of his turbulent spell as British Consul in Rome from 1860 to 1871. Keats was not Severn's only famous friend. For most of his adult life Severn was at the heart of the large, lively British community in Rome welcoming amongst others Gladstone, who became his most important patron, Ruskin, Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Turner, Samuel Palmer, David Wilkie, and many more. He maintained long friendships with Leigh Hunt, Mary Shelley, Charles Eastlake, Richard Monckton Milnes, amongst others, and enjoyed a rich family life.

Joseph Severn
Joseph Severn

Author: Grant F. Scott

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 662

ISBN-13: 1351924850

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This is the first modern scholarly edition of the letters and memoirs of Joseph Severn, English painter and deathbed companion of John Keats. It includes letters from a remarkable collection of never-before-published correspondence held by descendants of the Severn family. Scott's unprecedented access to hundreds of new letters has resulted in a major revisionist work that challenges traditional ideas about Severn's life and character. The edition includes new information about Severn's early artistic success in Italy, an extraordinarily thorough record of his day-to-day activities as a working artist in England, and surprising details about his experience as British Consul in Rome. The volume represents a significant work of recovery, printing in full three important memoirs that have until now appeared only in inaccurate excerpts and offering thirty-three illustrations that demonstrate the range of Severn's talents as a painter. Scott makes a compelling case for a revaluation of Severn, whose friends also included Charles Eastlake, William Gladstone, Leigh Hunt, John Ruskin, and Mary Shelley. This collection will prove valuable not only to literary biographers and Keats scholars, but also to art and cultural historians of the Romantic and Victorian eras. Adding significantly to the volume's usefulness are a detailed chronology of Severn's life and artwork, and appendices containing an index of the newly discovered letters and a ledger of Severn's patrons, paintings and commissions.

The Life and Letters of William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod". Volume 1: 1855-1894
The Life and Letters of William Sharp and

Author: William F. Halloran

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2018-11-27

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 1783745037

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William Sharp (1855-1905) conducted one of the most audacious literary deceptions of his or any time. Sharp was a Scottish poet, novelist, biographer and editor who in 1893 began to write critically and commercially successful books under the name Fiona Macleod. This was far more than just a pseudonym: he corresponded as Macleod, enlisting his sister to provide the handwriting and address, and for more than a decade "Fiona Macleod" duped not only the general public but such literary luminaries as William Butler Yeats and, in America, E. C. Stedman. Sharp wrote "I feel another self within me now more than ever; it is as if I were possessed by a spirit who must speak out". This three-volume collection brings together Sharp’s own correspondence – a fascinating trove in its own right, by a Victorian man of letters who was on intimate terms with writers including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, and George Meredith – and the Fiona Macleod letters, which bring to life Sharp’s intriguing "second self". With an introduction and detailed notes by William F. Halloran, this richly rewarding collection offers a wonderful insight into the literary landscape of the time, while also investigating a strange and underappreciated phenomenon of late-nineteenth-century English literature. It is essential for scholars of the period, and it is an illuminating read for anyone interested in authorship and identity.

The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn
The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn

Author: William Sharp

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9781230400839

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ... In poetry and painting, things are not to be represented as they positively exist, for there ix not an entire pleasure in them in that view; but they should be embellished to the utmost, always however in taste, and in the feeling of the subject. Those who object to your boys, should, on the same principle, object to so many beautiful women assembled at the same moment in the same vintage--both are improbable, only the boys are less so. God has given us a real world and an imaginary one--both lovely and both perfect; and-He has also given us the power to relieve our minds by flying from one to the other, and by mingling them at our will for our delight. The last belongs especially to the poet and the painter; when they fail to take advantage of it, they become matter-of-fact gentlemen, who use their fine words and their fine colours to no purpose. Your man is a matter-of-fact; your boys a touch of poetry. The former a disagreeable reality, the latter a brilliant probability, a threading of the imagination through the dull course of common events. Your own natural feeling led you to the beautiful, the poetic, and your fear of infringing on the usual mode, the common one, has startled you. Have I satisfied you? " It was about this time that Severn met, and was at once strongly attracted by Miss Elizabeth Montgomerie, Lady Westmorland's ward. In one of his ' Reminiscences' he speaks of this events as having occurred towards the end of 1825, but other evidence, together with an allusion in a letter from Brown, written in August of the same year, and hints in his home-letters, prove that he must have met Miss Montgomerie during or shortly after the Christmas season of 1824--25, if not, indeed, earlier. " It was in the early winter of 1825, ..".

The Life and Letters of William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod". Volume 3: 1900-1905
The Life and Letters of William Sharp and

Author: William F. Halloran

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2020-09-28

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1800640080

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What an achievement! It is a major work. The letters taken together with the excellent introductory sections - so balanced and judicious and informative - what emerges is an amazing picture of William Sharp the man and the writer which explores just how fascinating a figure he is. Clearly a major reassessment is due and this book could make it happen. —Andrew Hook, Emeritus Bradley Professor of English and American Literature, Glasgow University William Sharp (1855-1905) conducted one of the most audacious literary deceptions of his or any time. Sharp was a Scottish poet, novelist, biographer and editor who in 1893 began to write critically and commercially successful books under the name Fiona Macleod. This was far more than just a pseudonym: he corresponded as Macleod, enlisting his sister to provide the handwriting and address, and for more than a decade "Fiona Macleod" duped not only the general public but such literary luminaries as William Butler Yeats and, in America, E. C. Stedman. Sharp wrote "I feel another self within me now more than ever; it is as if I were possessed by a spirit who must speak out". This three-volume collection brings together Sharp’s own correspondence – a fascinating trove in its own right, by a Victorian man of letters who was on intimate terms with writers including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, and George Meredith – and the Fiona Macleod letters, which bring to life Sharp’s intriguing "second self". With an introduction and detailed notes by William F. Halloran, this richly rewarding collection offers a wonderful insight into the literary landscape of the time, while also investigating a strange and underappreciated phenomenon of late-nineteenth-century English literature. It is essential for scholars of the period, and it is an illuminating read for anyone interested in authorship and identity.