Anne Margaret Daniel

The odd couple: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jonathan Bate yokes the two to compare their leading achievements, and while some parallels work, others are decidedly strained

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  • Bright Star, Green Light: The Beautiful Works and Damned Lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Jonathan Bate

    William Collins, pp. 416, £25

On a shard of paper, some time in the bleak mid-1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald incorporated a favourite line from one of his favourite poets, John Keats, in a short verse of his own:

Don’t you worry I surrenderDays are long and life’s a benderStill I know thatTender is the Night

Keats was a Romantic, perhaps the Romantic, with his lyric gift and tragically brief life.

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