Bright Star

London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year old English poet, John Keats, and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, an outspoken student of high fashion. This unlikely pair began at odds, he thinking her a stylish minx, while she was unimpressed not only by his poetry but also by literature in general. However, when Fanny heard that Keats was nursing his seriously ill younger brother, her efforts to help touched Keats and when she asked him to teach her about poetry, he agreed. The poetry soon became a romantic remedy that worked not only to sort their differences but also to fuel an impassioned love affair.

When Fanny’s alarmed mother and Keats’ best friend finally awoke to their attachment, the relationship already had an unstoppable momentum. Intensely and helplessly absorbed in each other, the young lovers were swept deeply in to powerful new sensations, “I have the feeling as if I were dissolving”, Keats wrote to her. Together they rode a wave of romantic obsession that only deepened as their troubles mounted. When Keats fell ill a year later, the two young lovers faced not marriage but separation and a painfully frustrated love. In Keats’ own poignant words, “forever panting and forever young”.