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3.5
Bright Star, Green Light: The Beautiful and Damned Lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald
ByPublisher Description
A dazzling biography of two interwoven, tragic lives: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
‘For awhile after you quit Keats,’ Fitzgerald once wrote, ‘All other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.’
John Keats died two hundred years ago, in February 1821. F. Scott Fitzgerald defined a decade that began one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age.
In this biography, prizewinning author Jonathan Bate recreates these two shining, tragic lives in parallel. Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works from the poet’s lines, but the two lived with echoing fates: both died young, loved to drink, were plagued by tuberculosis, were haunted by their first love, and wrote into a new decade of release, experimentation and decadence.
Luminous and vital, this biography goes through the looking glass to meet afresh two of the greatest and best-known Romantic writers in their twinned centuries.
‘For awhile after you quit Keats,’ Fitzgerald once wrote, ‘All other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.’
John Keats died two hundred years ago, in February 1821. F. Scott Fitzgerald defined a decade that began one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age.
In this biography, prizewinning author Jonathan Bate recreates these two shining, tragic lives in parallel. Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works from the poet’s lines, but the two lived with echoing fates: both died young, loved to drink, were plagued by tuberculosis, were haunted by their first love, and wrote into a new decade of release, experimentation and decadence.
Luminous and vital, this biography goes through the looking glass to meet afresh two of the greatest and best-known Romantic writers in their twinned centuries.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesBright Star, Green Light: The Beautiful and Damned Lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald Reviews
3.5
“As a history lover I thoroughly enjoyed this, regardless of the fact I don’t believe the author proved their thesis. The subtitle of this book is perfect. This is a biography about two men who died tragically young and made beautiful art. Oh, and Fitzgerald really liked Keats.
But in the introduction the author says these two men led parallel lives that are uncannily similar. And…. I didn’t get that. So drop that expectation and you’ll be great. I loved loved loved everything I learned about these two and their dramatic romanticism.”
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