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Bright Star, Green Light: The Beautiful Works and Damned Lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald Audiobook
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An immensely pleasurable biography of two interwoven, tragic figures: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald
In this radiant dual biography, Jonathan Bate explores the fascinating parallel lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald, writers who worked separately—on different continents, a century apart, in distinct genres—but whose lives uncannily echoed.
Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works from the poet’s lines, but the two shared similar 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. Both were outsiders and Romantics, longing for the past as they sped blazingly into the future.
Using Plutarch’s ancient model of “parallel lives,” Jonathan Bate recasts the inspired lives of two of the greatest and best‑known Romantic writers. Commemorating both the bicentenary of Keats’ death and the centenary of the Roaring Twenties, this is a moving exploration of literary influence.
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“Bate…zeroes in on the work: his feeling for it, by being so exacting, is infectious, especially in the case of Keats…The principal achievement of this pairing is to remind us of the way that literature connects us.”
— The Guardian (London)
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“An excellent introduction to each writer…[that] illuminates both.”
— New Statesman (London) -
“Keats was Fitzgerald’s guiding star…An energetic and highly engaging game of literary ping-pong across the ages…What an immensely charismatic pair they are.”
— The Times (London) -
“Counterpointing the two men’s writing lives and ambitions, as Bate does here, throws fresh light on both men.”
— John Barnard, University of Leeds -
“With a fine-tuned ear for poetic language, a master-biographer’s eye for the revealing detail, and an astonishing mental filing system, Jonathan Bate has written a wonderfully illuminating and moving book.”
— Robert Watson, University of California, Los Angeles
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About Jonathan Bate
Jonathan Bate is Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities at Arizona State University and a senior research fellow at Oxford University, where he was formerly provost of Worcester College.