Friday Fashion: Exhibition about Keats lover: Fanny Brawne

Abbie Cornish and Ben Wishawe as Fanny Brawne and John Keats in Bright Star

Those of us who have seen Bright Star cannot get past our curiosity about Fanny Brawne, a Regency seamstress and John Keats's lover (played superbly by Abbie Cornish). The film was breathtaking and illuminating.

"According to Wentworth Place, the museum ran inside Keats’ Hampstead home, Brawne subscribed to plenty of fashion magazines of the era, and didn’t just sew idly- but was practically a fashion designer in waiting. This summer Wentworth Place are opening up an exhibition based not just on her relationship with Keats, but with the clothes she was drawn to and created (through a series of created artworks made to discover.)" - Fashion for Lunch

Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne

Fashion Exhibition About Keats Lover:

"No one knew until long after the death of poet John Keats; when his love letters to Fanny Brawne were published in 1878, about the fiance who had been his companion during those final years. Brawne it seems was known for being elegant, witty and really into fashion- the timely Regency style of course, and anything else with a historical whim to it."

The Needle is Always At Hand will be exhibited at the John Keats House in Hampstead, London, from June 14 through August 14, 2011.

"An exhibition exploring Fanny Brawne's time at Keats House through her interest in dress. Blurring the lines between costume and art this exhibition invites visitors to find each piece for themselves, to discover more about Fanny Brawne, Regency fashions and dressmaking."

FREE with an admission ticket to the house.

Fanny Brawne

Read: A Biography of Fanny Brawne and Discussion of her Romance With John Keats.

Giggly Austen quote of the week

Oh my – this made me more than giggle! Guardian writer Tanya Gold saw the new Keats bio-pic Bright Star over the weekend, dropped her popcorn, and then remembered why Hollywood should stop making films about our great writers. Among mention of the highlights of past blunders were Hugh Grant and his handkerchief in Impromptu (1991), Renee Zellwegger’s and her pout in Beatrix Potter (2006) and one rippingly funny analogy of a recent Austen bio-pic:

And it isn't just Keats who gets monstered. Do you remember Becoming Jane (2007)? "Society expected her to marry," said the unforgettable trailer, "but Jane Austen had ideas of her own." You think? Austen was played by Anne Hathaway, a skeletal actress with a big smug grin. If Austen had looked like her, she would never have written a word – she would have been staring in a mirror, saying, "I am hot, I am smoking, I am babelicious." I remember the anger still. I remember thinking, Hollywood has raped Jane Austen. They have turned the patron saint of celibates into a hottie. Austen's writing was incidental, a stuck-on accident that unfortunately had to be mentioned. "What is Jane doing?" asks a character. "Writing," was the reply.

That’s right. Our doe eyed babelicious Jane. Such a hottie.

I had mixed feeling about Becoming Jane. It was a good movie, but had little to do with the Jane Austen I knew and loved. Unlike writer Tanya Gold, I do appreciate a good bio-pic on writers and artists – or at least want to – I just can’t think of any!!! Can anyone remind me of what I have forgotten? Which movies do you fondly remember that did not spoil your vision of what one of your fav’s life should be? I am hard pressed for an example!

Cheers, Laurel Ann, Austenprose

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death. - John Keats

Listen to a wonderful reading of this poem by Samuel West at this link.

It is 1818 and John Keats, 23, begins a secret love affair with Fanny Brawne, his next door neighbor. The film, which is coming out in theaters this fall and is set in the Regency era, has received rave reviews, especially for Abbie Cornish. Jane Campion (The Piano), directed.

Click on the link to this movie trailer.

• Review of the film in Rolling Stone
• New York Times Movie Review of Bright Star

Posted by Vic, Jane Austen's World