LLANOS Y GUTIERREZ, Valentin Maria.

£13,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Sandoval: or, the Freemason. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author, "George Keats, the gift of the author", on the title page of all three volumes. George Keats (1797-1841), younger brother of the poet John, never met Llanos, his brother-in law, but was pleased to have as "a friend and brother" a man of letters, and enjoyed both his published novels.Valentin Maria Llanos Gutierrez (1795-1885) was an exile from King Ferdinand VII's reactionary Spain since 1814 and was in Rome in 1821 when John Keats was seeking convalescence there. Being interested in England and English writers, Llanos gained an introduction to Keats, met and spoke with him occasionally, and is said by the novelist Gerald Griffin to have conversed with him just three days before his death. Llanos then left for England with a letter of introduction from Keats's friend, the artist Joseph Severn, who was with Keats at the end. In summer 1821 Llanos met both Keats's lover Fanny Brawne and his youngest sister Fanny Keats. He married Fanny Keats in 1826, the year of publication of this title. Charles Cowden Clarke, the schoolteacher of the Keats brothers and a significant literary patron of the poet, remembered Llanos as "a man of liberal principles, very attractive bearing, and of more than ordinary accomplishments." He wrote three novels, Don Esteban (1825), Sandoval (1826) and The Spanish Exile (written 1828, never published). On Ferdinand VII's death in 1833, Llanos and Fanny went to Spain,

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.