News at Eleven: The importance of Charles Cowden Clarke's letter

of July 1821 is that it was written a quarter of a century before he began to compile the recollections which are a key source for much of our knowledge of Keats's schooling and his early development. It was not until March 16, 1846, that he was spurred into writing the memoranda of Keats's "early Life" by Richard Monckton Milnes, who was gathering material for the first collected edition of Keats's works. This was followed by Clarke's article in the Atlantic Monthly, which in turn provided the basis for his most widely known account, the chapter on Keats in Recollections of Writers. The Morning Chronicle letter, written only three or four years after the events it describes, is by far the earliest account of Keats's reactions by his most important early literary friend, and deserves to be analysed carefully.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Who killed John Keats?

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