A KEATS FIND

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 67, 10 June 1927, Page 12

A KEATS FIND

THE POET’S DICTIONARY “TO JOHN KEATS, FROM F. 8.” (Special to THE SUN. ) WELLINGTON, Thursday. What may prove to ne a Keats find of the first importance has been made by Mr. Johannes Andersen, librarian at the Turnbull Library, amidst the books and papers bequeathed to the institution by the late Mr. Walter Mantell, of Wellington. This is a copy of an early English dictionary inscribed: “To John Keats, from F. 8.” Mr. Andersen thinks that the book may have been given to Keats by Fanny Brawne, the girl whom Keats loved, and the loss of whom was one of the causes of his early death, and that examination of it may reveal it to be the source of some of Keats's archaic expressions. The book also bears pasted inside the cover the card of Charles Brown, the artist, a close friend of Keats, who accompanied him on a walking tour of the Lake country, and who there made one of the most famous portraits of the poet. This points to the book passing into Brown's possession after Keats’s death. Many more treasures have been discovered among the Mantell papers, including fresh letters of Carlyle and Ruskin, and a new box of letters was found to-day. The full extent of the discoveries will not be known for some weeks, but they represent many hundreds of pounds, and have great associations. The explanation of the book coming into the country is that Charles Armitage Brown came to New Zealand. He died about 1860 and is buried on the slopes of Marsland Hill, New Plymouth. It is interesting to note, also, that one of Brown’s portraits of the poet was discovered in Auckland.