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143 the LeGacy deferred 1821–1848 The most vexing and lasting issue was how best to define John Keats’s legacy . George fretted over it until his death. Everyone in the poet’s circle shared the belief that they had been touched by his greatness. But not one of them succeeded in capturing and memorializing it, especially not George. The biographical genre was typically described as the life, letters, and literary remains of the subject. In John’s case, his life in the decades after his death was mostly a blank, shrouded in a veil of nondisclosure that George was best qualified to explain. Other members of the circle possessed various Keats letters, although many of his best were in George’s hands. With the poet’s death, his publisher John Taylor held most of the copyrights to the published poems. Charles Brown, as self-appointed “literary executor,” possessed many of the “literary remains,” the evolutionary drafts that revealed how the poetry developed, as well as the draft play Otho the Great. George, Brown, and Taylor needed to cooperate with one another to achieve a biography, but it was not to be. Percy Shelley and Leigh Hunt published incomplete vignettes about the poet. Taylor had the desire to do a biography but never pulled it off. John Reynolds would have liked to be asked to write one, but he was not. Charles Cowden Clarke also had the desire from the beginning, and although he wrote a few articles, he did not pull all his thoughts together until his Recollections of Writers appeared posthumously in 1878. George Keats, as represented by Charles Dilke, played more than a passive role in creating his brother’s legacy. It is worth looking at what each accomplished to understand George’s point of view. In the end, Brown’s selection of Richard Monckton Milnes, who had never met the poet, proved to be as good a solution as any. The first to jump at the opportunity was John Taylor, who advertised on behalf of Taylor and Hessey in the New Times on 29 March and 9 April 1821, “Speedily will be published, with Portrait, Memoirs and Remains 144 GeorGe Keats of KentucKy of John Keats.”1 He believed that a swift vindication from his Tory critics would benefit the poet’s reputation and perhaps help sales. In April Taylor asked Severn to forward the poet’s papers from Rome, but Severn sent them to Brown instead. Brown thwarted Taylor, writing to Severn: “I shall always be the first to acknowledge Taylor’s kindness to Keats; . . . however . . . I fear Taylor may do Keats an injustice . . . from the want of knowing his character . . . I am afraid it will be made a job—a mere trading job— and that I will lend no hand to.” Brown also noted, “I heard yesterday that [Charles Cowden] Clark[e] is thinking of writing a memoir—to tell the truth I would rather join him.”2 Taylor had led Brown to believe that he wanted the Keats materials but not Brown’s editorial contributions. Taylor’s efforts were assisted by Reynolds , whom Brown disliked and who was also feuding with Leigh Hunt. Dilke and Thomas Richards believed that Taylor’s effort showed indecorous haste. Nevertheless, Taylor announced in the June 1822 edition of his London Magazine the proposed “Memoirs of . . . [Keats’] life. . . . To be accompanied with a selection from his unpublished manuscripts.”3 Within months of John’s death and his receipt of Taylor’s invoice, George responsibly sent a note of indebtedness to Taylor and Hessey for the £150 advance made to the poet against unrealized revenues from Endymion and Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. In 1825 George repaid the £150, as well as another £30 to £40 to cover what Taylor may have loaned to John. However, Taylor had seriously irritated George in 1821 by asking James Tallant in Cincinnati to collect the publishing losses and encouraging him to gossip that George had appropriated £700 of the poet’s funds the year before. In 1825 George wrote to Dilke, “I am not competent to write a life and shall be happy to communicate any materials I am in possession of to any person to whom I have no positive objection as the author of John’s life. Reynolds and yourself [are] I think every way Competent to execute it with truth, feeling, and good taste.”4 George clearly omitted Taylor, as well as Brown, from...

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