The first full-length critical study of Keats's letters, presenting fresh readings and developing a new theory of epistolary contingency.

John Keats's personal letters are widely considered to be some of the finest in the English language – and in any language: the most inventive, most brilliant, most moving. While they have been frequently mined for the rich insight they provide into Keats's tragically short life and his famous poems, this original reading takes a new approach to explore the challenges and opportunities involved in close-reading the letters as literary works in their own right. This is the first full-length critical study of Keats's letters, accounting for their unique power and rhetorical brilliance while also developing a framework for the formal literary study of the personal letter. With chapters covering the art of letter-writing, becoming a poet, epistolarity and literary criticism, friendship and correspondence, touch, intimacy, distance, and love, Bennett's book offers a comprehensive reading of the letters as a body of work and contributes impactfully to the poetics of letter-writing.