Editing John Keats (section)

===Biographers===
None of Keats's biographies were written by people who had known him.<ref name="gittings3"/> Shortly after his death, his publishers announced they would speedily publish ''The memoirs and remains of John Keats'' but his friends refused to cooperate and argued with each other to such an extent that the project was abandoned. Leigh Hunt's ''Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries'' (1828) gives the first biographical account, strongly emphasising Keats's supposedly humble origins, a misconception which still continues.<ref name="NDB"/> Given that he was becoming a significant figure within artistic circles, a succession of other publications followed, including anthologies of his many notes, chapters and letters.<ref name="gittings3">Gittings (1968), p. 3.</ref> 

However, early accounts often gave contradictory or biased versions of events and were subject to dispute.<ref name="gittings3"/> His friends Brown, Severn, Dilke, Shelley and his guardian Richard Abbey, his publisher Taylor, Fanny Brawne and many others issued posthumous commentary on Keats's life. These early writings coloured all subsequent biography and have become embedded in a body of Keats legend.<ref>Gittings (1968), p. 5.</ref>

Shelley promoted Keats as someone whose achievement could not be separated from agony, who was 'spiritualised' by his decline and too fine-tuned to endure the harshness of life; the consumptive, suffering image popularly held today.<ref>Motion (1997), p. 499.</ref> The first full biography was published in 1848 by Richard Monckton Milnes. Landmark Keats biographers since include [[Sidney Colvin]], [[Robert Gittings]], [[Walter Jackson Bate]], [[Aileen Ward]], and [[Andrew Motion]]. The idealised image of the heroic romantic poet who battled poverty and died young was inflated by the late arrival of an authoritative biography and the lack of an accurate likeness. Most of the surviving portraits of Keats were painted after his death, and those who knew him held that they did not succeed in capturing his unique quality and intensity.<ref name="NDB"/>