Lucasta Miller

‘I always made an awkward bow’: John Keats’s poignant farewell

Alessandro Gallenzi traces the poet’s final months in painstaking detail – from boarding ship in London to his agonising death in Rome

Ink wash by Joseph Severn of Keats on his deathbed. [Bridgeman Images] 
issue 24 September 2022
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  • Written In Water:Keats’s Final Journey

    Alessandro Gallenzi

    Alma Books, pp. 320, £16

On Sunday 17 September 1820, John Keats and his travelling companion, the young painter Joseph Severn, set sail for Italy, where it was hoped that the warmer climate would benefit the poet’s failing health. It didn’t. He died of tuberculosis in Rome the following February at the age of only 25.

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