My Creed is Love: Keats, Fanny Brawne and the perils of Regency courtship

Keats House hosts My Creed is Love: Keats, Fanny Brawne and the perils of Regency courtship on Thursday 12 November, a talk that looks at John Keats's relationship with Fanny Brawne through the letters he wrote to her. The session runs from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM, and it's presented by Keats House in partnership with the Keats Foundation, the independent charity that promotes Keats's life and work and the wider Romantic period.

Two historians lead the conversation: Amanda Vickery, Professor of Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, and John Mullan, Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. They'll be talking about the courtship conventions of the Regency era and how they shaped Keats and Brawne's relationship. A good part of that comes down to the letters themselves, some of the most beautiful Keats ever wrote, and the way they were constrained by the social rules of the time. They'll be looking at what it actually meant to become 'engaged' back then, and how unusual or risky their correspondence was by those standards.

Both speakers bring a specific angle to it. Vickery is a social historian and a prize-winning writer and broadcaster; her books include Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (2010) and The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (1998). Mullan is a literary historian, a Booker Prize judge, and the author of What Matters in Jane Austen? (2012), The Artful Dickens (2020) and How Novels Work. Between them, they cover the social history of the period and the literary weight of the writing, so the talk should work as both a look at the era and a closer reading of the letters.

It's at Keats House, 10 Keats Grove, London NW3 2RR, on Thursday 12 November, from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM.