Searching for a Keats scholar or information on friendships

[KB27]

Hello all,

I'm preparing for writing my dissertation next year, which will focus on the evolution of Romanticism as influenced by friendships between great writers. As a massive Keats fangirl, I really really want to include something about him rather than the usual Wordsworth/Wordsworth/Coleridge.
My question is: is there a living Keats scholar or Romanticism professor that I could perhaps contact about Keats's possible friendships?
My secondary question also is whether anyone here has knowledge of any such relationships. I found a thread here about two of his potential mentors, but would anyone be able to shed light on whether this was strictly mentor-student and whether there are any publications?
I would greatly appreciate any kind of information on the topic.

Thank you

Kal

[Ravenwing]

Welcome to this message board, Kal,

I think that Keats' most important friendship was his relationship with Fanny Braun.

A few years ago, I did post ten of the earliest Keats' biographies on my "Poetic Space" website; perhaps you can find some of the information that you are looking for there: http://webspace.webring.com/people/tl/lanouvelledecadence/keabio.html

From Ravenwing.

[BrokenLyre]

Welcome, Kal.

Look up professor Ronald Sharp - I remember reading a wonderful article of his on Keats and Friendship.
Here is some info on him:
http://english.vassar.edu/bios/sharp.html

Paste the link and contact him. That's what I would do.
Check this out from his website - that I have above: Note his Friendship interest:

Ronald Sharp is Professor of English at Vassar College, where he was Dean of the Faculty from 2003 to 2008. Before he came to Vassar he was Acting President, John Crowe Ransom Professor of English, and Provost of Kenyon College, where he was also Editor of The Kenyon Review. His special interests include nineteenth-century British literature, contemporary poetry, Australian literature, Romanticism, and the literature of friendship.

Sharp is the author or editor of six books, including Keats, Skepticism, and the Religion of Beauty; Friendship and Literature: Spirit and Form; Reading George Steiner (with Nathan A. Scott, Jr.); The Persistence of Poetry: Bicentennial Essays on John Keats (with Robert M. Ryan); and Selected Poems of Michael S. Harper. With the late novelist and short-story writer Eudora Welty, he edited The Norton Book of Friendship