Oh! how I love, on a fair summer's eve and As from the darkening gloom a silver dove : manuscript poems in autograph of Richard Woodhouse, [1816 or later].

Dating: Woodhouse has dated both sonnets 1816. Stillinger (1978, p. 550) suggests that Keats may have composed "Oh! how I love, on a fair summer's eve" in the summer of 1816. Keats composed "As from the darkening gloom a silver dove" after the death of his grandmother in December 1814. (On the verso of "On peace" (MA 215.71, i.e., formerly fol. 7v in W²) Woodhouse has written "This sonnet would seem to have been written on the death of some person - & probably a female," followed by two lines of shorthand reading "I enquired of K. whether it was not so; and he said he had written it on the death of his grandmother, about five days after; but that he had never told any one, not even his brother, the occasion on which it was written; he said he was tenderly attached to her." This note is dated 7 February 1819, and refers to the sonnet "As from the darkening gloom a silver dove," which is transcribed by Woodhouse on fol. 8r of W².)
Part of a large collection, assembled by Richard Woodhouse, of letters and manuscripts relating to the English poet John Keats. Items in the collection have been described in individual catalog records; see collection-level record for MA 215 for more information.