Chapter 6 opens with a discussion of some of the letters Keats sent his brother and sister-in-law after they migrated to America in the summer of 1818. It explores the paradox that letters can at times generate a sense of intimacy not so much in spite of distance but because of it. It looks at the way in which Keats can find people ‘pressing’ on him, and even oppressive, such that he can seem to value the prosthetic sense of presence offered by a letter and the personal space it can allow a different kind of intimacy. The second half of the chapter considers letters as ‘touching’, particularly in relation to Keats’s love letters to Fanny Brawne, where he seems particularly attuned to the physical touch of a letter and the way that a letter can be emotionally ‘touching’ precisely because it is distanced, mediated, and delayed.

The freedman Gregorio Cosme Osorio’s extant letters from Madrid in 1795 are the focus of Chapter 6. They provide a direct perspective of a cobrero leader’s legal culture, his views on the case, and his activities as liaison between Madrid and El Cobre (including an alleged meeting with the king). Cosme’s missives from the royal court, which high colonial officials considered subversive, critiqued politics of the law in the colony and kept the cobreros abreast of the imperial edicts issued in Madrid in their favor which colonial authorities ignored. His liaison role during fifteen years was crucial to keep the case alive in the royal court.