SOURCE: Introduction to Keats: A Bibliography and Reference Guide with an Essay on Keats' Reputation, University of Toronto Press, 1949, pp. 1-liv.

In the following excerpt, MacGillivray examines how Milnes sought to vindicate Keats' sullied reputation in his 1848 biography Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats.

Milnes' book[Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats] was certainly not a biography of the first rank, but it would be difficult to name one that was better designed "for the purpose of vindicating the character and advancing the fame" of its subject. Falsehoods and half-truths about Keats had been in circulation for thirty years, some inspired by enemies, others by well-meaning friends, and all accepted indiscriminately by the reading public. In the Preface (pp. xvi-xvii) the biographer gives an account of his first and general problem.

I had else to consider what procedure was most likely to raise the...