Keats' Gothic Readings

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. . . strength alone though of the Muses born
Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,
Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres
Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs,
And thorns of life; forgetting the great end
Of poesy, that it should be a friend
To sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.
 
 

• Beckford, William. Vathek (1787). Letter to J. H. Reynolds 25 March 1818, concerning the tedious curator of the cottage where Burns was born: "I sho'd like to employ Caleph Vathek to kick him."

Verse letter to J. H. Reynolds 25 March 1818: "Part of the building [the Enchanted Castle] was a chosen See / Built by a banish'd Santon of Chaldee" (41-42). As Gittings points out in The Mask of Keats (1968), "the Santons were a race of holy men who appear in Vathek; they too suffer kicking and other indignities by the order of the Caleph" (101). Gittings also argues persuasively that Keats borrows imagery from the fiery palace of Eblis in his creation of the Titans' underworld in "Hyperion" (255).

• Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland; or The Transformation (1798). Letter to Woodhouse 22 Sept. 1819: "Ask [Reynolds] if he has read any of the American Brown's novels--I have read one called Wieland--very powerful--something like Godwin--Between Schiller and Godwin--A domestic prototype of Schiller's Armenian--More clever than Godwin--A strange American scion of the German trunk. Powerful genius--accomplished horrors."

• Godwin, William. Caleb Williams (1794) and/or St. Leon (1799). See letter to Woodhouse above.

• (?) Lewis, Matthew Gregory. The Monk (1796) or perhaps some of the Romantic Tales (1808). Ward, in John Keats: The Making of a Poet, conjectures that "some of his pocket money went on thrillers popular with schoolboys of his time, such as Beckford's Vathek and the novels of Monk Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe" (18).

• Maturin, Charles. Bertram (1815) and Manuel (1816).  See Stuart Peterfreund, "Keats' Debt to Maturin," WC 13 (1983): 45-49.

• Peacock, Thomas Love. given their acquaintance, a good chance of one of his gothic sendups like Nightmare Abbey (1818) or Headlong Hall (1816). See letter to Haydon 14 March 1818: "Peacock has damned satire."

• Radcliffe, Ann. The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).

Letter to Reynolds 14 March 1818: "Buy a girdle--put a pebble in your mouth--loosen your braces--for I am going among scenery whence I intend to tip you to the Damosel Radcliffe--I'll cavern you, and grotto you, and waterfall you, and wood you, and water you, and immense rock you, and tremendous round you, and solitutde you."

Letter to George Keats 14 Feb. 1819: "In my packet I shall send you the Pot of Basil, St. Agnes eve, and if I should have finished it a little thing called 'Eve of St. Mark'--you see what fine Mother Radcliffe names I have--it is not my fault--I did not search for them."

Also see Martha Hale Shackleford's "'The Eve of St. Agnes' and The Mysteries of Udolpho," PMLA 36. (1921): 104-118.

• Schiller, Friedrich. The Ghostseer, or the Armenian. See note under Brown.