John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of
Romantic poets, with
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...
and
Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century, he was placed in the canon of English literature, strongly influencing many writers of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'' of 1888 called one ode "one of the final masterpieces".
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...
named his first encounter with Keats an experience he felt all his life. Keats had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in the
series of odes. Typically of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion through natural imagery. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature – in particular "
Ode to a Nightingale
"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written either in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, London or, according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats' house at Wentworth Place, also ...
", "
Ode on a Grecian Urn
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819, first published anonymously in ''Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819'' (see 1820 in poetry)''.''
The poem is one of the " Great Odes of 1819", which a ...
", "
Sleep and Poetry
"Sleep and Poetry" (1816) is a poem by the English Romantic poet John Keats. It was started late one evening while staying the night at Leigh Hunt's cottage. It is often cited as a clear example of Keats's bower-centric poetry, yet it contains li ...
" and the sonnet "
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment while he was reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer, who was fre ...
".
Early life and education, 1795-1810
John Keats was born in
Moorgate
Moorgate was one of the City of London's northern gates in its defensive wall, the last to be built. The gate took its name from the Moorfields, an area of marshy land that lay immediately north of the wall.
The gate was demolished in 1762, bu ...
, London, on 31 October 1795, to Thomas and Frances Keats (née Jennings). There is little evidence of his exact birthplace. Although Keats and his family seem to have marked his birthday on 29 October, baptism records give the date as the 31st.
[Motion, 1997, p. 10.][Kelvin Everest, "Keats, John (1795–1821)"](_blank)
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004 Online (subscription only) He was the eldest of four surviving children; his younger siblings were
George
George may refer to:
People
* George (given name)
* George (surname)
* George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George
* George Washington, First President of the United States
* George W. Bush, 43rd Presid ...
(1797–1841), Thomas (1799–1818), and Frances Mary "Fanny" (1803–1889), who later married the Spanish author Valentín Llanos Gutiérrez. Another son was lost in infancy. His father first worked as a
hostler at the stables attached to the ''Swan and Hoop Inn'' owned by his father-in-law, John Jennings, an establishment he later managed, and where the growing family lived for some years. Keats believed he was born at the inn, a birthplace of humble origins, but there is no evidence to support this.
The Globe pub now occupies the site (2012), a few yards from modern
Moorgate station. Keats was baptised at
St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate
St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate is a Church of England church in the Bishopsgate Without area of the City of London, and also, by virtue of lying outside the city's (now demolished) eastern walls, part of London's East End.
Adjoining the buildi ...
, and sent to a local
dame school
Dame schools were small, privately run schools for young children that emerged in the British Isles and its colonies during the early modern period. These schools were taught by a “school dame,” a local woman who would educate children f ...
as a child.
![Keatslifemask](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Keatslifemask.jpg)
His parents wished to send their sons to
Eton Eton most commonly refers to Eton College, a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England.
Eton may also refer to:
Places
*Eton, Berkshire, a town in Berkshire, England
* Eton, Georgia, a town in the United States
* Éton, a commune in the Meuse dep ...
or
Harrow, but the family decided they could not afford the fees. In the summer of 1803, John was sent to board at John Clarke's school in
Enfield
Enfield may refer to:
Places Australia
* Enfield, New South Wales
* Enfield, South Australia
** Electoral district of Enfield, a state electoral district in South Australia, corresponding to the suburb
** Enfield High School (South Australia)
...
, close to his grandparents' house. The small school had a liberal outlook and a progressive curriculum more modern than the larger, more prestigious schools.
In the family atmosphere at Clarke's, Keats developed an interest in classics and history, which would stay with him throughout his short life. The headmaster's son, Charles Cowden Clarke, also became an important mentor and friend, introducing Keats to
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
literature, including
Tasso
TASSO (Two Arm Spectrometer SOlenoid) was a particle detector at the PETRA particle accelerator at the German national laboratory DESY. The TASSO collaboration is best known for having discovered the gluon, the mediator of the strong interaction an ...
,
Spenser, and
Chapman's translations. The young Keats was described by his friend Edward Holmes as a volatile character, "always in extremes", given to indolence and fighting. However, at 13 he began focusing his energy on reading and study, winning his first academic prize in midsummer 1809.
[Gittings (1987), pp. 1–3.]
In April 1804, when Keats was eight, his father died from a skull fracture after falling from his horse while returning from a visit to Keats and his brother George at school. Thomas Keats died
intestate
Intestacy is the condition of the estate of a person who dies without having in force a valid will or other binding declaration. Alternatively this may also apply where a will or declaration has been made, but only applies to part of the estat ...
. Frances remarried two months later, but left her new husband soon afterwards, and the four children went to live with a grandmother, Alice Jennings, in the village of
Edmonton
Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...
.
In March 1810, when Keats was 14, his mother died of
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
, leaving the children in their grandmother's custody. She appointed two guardians, Richard Abbey and John Sandell, for them. That autumn, Keats left Clarke's school to be an apprentice with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and
apothecary
''Apothecary'' () is a mostly archaic term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses '' materia medica'' (medicine) to physicians, surgeons, and patients. The modern chemist (British English) or pharmacist (British and North Amer ...
who was a neighbour and the doctor of the Jennings family. Keats lodged in the attic above the surgery, at 7 Church Street, until 1813.
Cowden Clarke, who remained close to Keats, called this period "the most placid time in Keats' life."
From 1814 Keats had two bequests, held in trust for him until his 21st birthday. £800 was willed by his grandfather John Jennings. Also Keats's mother left a legacy of £8000 to be equally divided among her living children.
[Keats's share would have increased on the death of his brother Tom in 1818.] It seems he was not told of the £800 and probably knew nothing of it as he never applied for it. Historically, blame has often been laid on Abbey as legal guardian, but he may also have been unaware of it. William Walton, solicitor for Keats's mother and grandmother, definitely knew and had a
duty of care
In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation that is imposed on an individual, requiring adherence to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be establi ...
to relay the information to Keats. It seems he did not, though it would have made a critical difference to the poet's expectations. Money was always a great concern and difficulty, as he struggled to stay out of debt and make his way in the world independently.
Career
Medical training and writing poetry
In October 1815, having finished his 5 year apprenticeship with Hammond, Keats registered as a medical student at
Guy's Hospital
Guy's Hospital is an NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in central London. It is part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and one of the institutions that comprise the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. ...
(now part of
King's College London) and began studying there. Within a month, he was accepted as a dresser at the hospital assisting surgeons during operations, the equivalent of a junior house surgeon today. It was a significant promotion, that marked a distinct aptitude for medicine; and it brought greater responsibility and a heavier workload.
Keats's long and expensive medical training with Hammond and at Guy's Hospital led his family to assume he would pursue a lifelong career in medicine, assuring financial security, and it seems that, at this point, Keats had a genuine desire to become a doctor.
He lodged near the hospital, at 28 St Thomas's Street in Southwark, with other medical students, including
Henry Stephens who gained fame as an inventor and ink magnate.
Keats's training took up increasing amounts of his writing time and he became increasingly ambivalent about it. He felt he was facing a stark choice.
He had written his first extant poem, "An Imitation of Spenser," in 1814, when he was 19. Now, strongly drawn by ambition, inspired by fellow poets such as
Leigh Hunt
James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 178428 August 1859), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist and poet.
Hunt co-founded '' The Examiner'', a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. He was the centre ...
and
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...
, and beleaguered by family financial crises, he suffered periods of depression. His brother George wrote that John "feared that he should never be a poet, & if he was not he would destroy himself." In 1816, Keats received his
apothecary's licence, which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician and surgeon, but before the end of the year he had informed his guardian that he resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon.
Publication and literary circles
Although he continued his work and training at Guy's, Keats devoted more and more time to the study of literature, experimenting with verse forms, particularly the sonnet.
In May 1816, Leigh Hunt agreed to publish the sonnet "O Solitude" in his magazine ''
The Examiner'', a leading liberal magazine of the day.
[Hirsch, Edward (2001)] This was the first appearance of Keats's poetry in print;
Charles Cowden Clarke
Charles Cowden Clarke (15 December 1787 – 13 March 1877) was an English author who was best known for his books on Shakespeare. He was also known for his compilation of poems as well as his edition of ''The Canterbury Tales'', which was rende ...
called it his friend's red letter day, first proof that Keats' ambitions were valid. Among his poems of 1816 was ''To My Brothers''. That summer, Keats went with Clarke to the seaside town of
Margate
Margate is a seaside town on the north coast of Kent in south-east England. The town is estimated to be 1.5 miles long, north-east of Canterbury and includes Cliftonville, Garlinge, Palm Bay and Westbrook.
The town has been a significan ...
to write. There he began "Calidore" and initiated an era of great letter writing. On returning to London, he took lodgings at 8 Dean Street, Southwark, and braced himself to study further for membership of the
Royal College of Surgeons
The Royal College of Surgeons is an ancient college (a form of corporation) established in England to regulate the activity of surgeons. Derivative organisations survive in many present and former members of the Commonwealth. These organisations a ...
.
In October 1816 Clarke introduced Keats to the influential Leigh Hunt, a close friend of Byron and Shelley. Five months later came the publication of ''Poems'', the first volume of Keats's verse, which included "I stood tiptoe" and "Sleep and Poetry," both strongly influenced by Hunt.
The book was a critical failure, arousing little interest, although Reynolds reviewed it favourably in ''The Champion''.
Clarke commented that the book "might have emerged in Timbuctoo."
Keats's publishers,
Charles and James Ollier, felt ashamed of it. Keats immediately changed publishers to
Taylor and Hessey in
Fleet Street. Unlike the Olliers, Keats's new publishers were enthusiastic about his work. Within a month of the publication of ''Poems'' they were planning a new Keats volume and had paid him an advance. Hessey became a steady friend to Keats and made the company's rooms available for young writers to meet. Their publishing lists came to include
Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...
,
Hazlitt,
Clare,
Hogg,
Carlyle and
Charles Lamb
Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his '' Essays of Elia'' and for the children's book '' Tales from Shakespeare'', co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764 ...
.
Through Taylor and Hessey, Keats met their
Eton Eton most commonly refers to Eton College, a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England.
Eton may also refer to:
Places
*Eton, Berkshire, a town in Berkshire, England
* Eton, Georgia, a town in the United States
* Éton, a commune in the Meuse dep ...
-educated lawyer, Richard Woodhouse, who advised them on literary as well as legal matters and was deeply impressed by ''Poems''. Although he noted that Keats could be "wayward, trembling, easily daunted," Woodhouse was convinced of Keats's genius, a poet to support as he became one of England's greatest writers. Soon after they met, the two became close friends, and Woodhouse started to collect Keatsiana, documenting as much as he could about the poetry. This archive survives as one of the main sources of information on Keats's work.
Andrew Motion represents him as
Boswell to Keats's
Johnson
Johnson is a surname of Anglo-Norman origin meaning "Son of John". It is the second most common in the United States and 154th most common in the world. As a common family name in Scotland, Johnson is occasionally a variation of ''Johnston'', a ...
, ceaselessly promoting his work, fighting his corner and spurring his poetry to greater heights. In later years, Woodhouse was one of the few to accompany Keats to
Gravesend,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
to embark on his final trip to Rome.
Despite the bad reviews of ''Poems'', Hunt published the essay "Three Young Poets" (
Shelley, Keats, and
Reynolds Reynolds may refer to:
Places Australia
*Hundred of Reynolds, a cadastral unit in South Australia
*Hundred of Reynolds (Northern Territory), a cadastral unit in the Northern Territory of Australia
United States
* Reynolds, Mendocino County, Calif ...
) and the sonnet "
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment while he was reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer, who was fre ...
," foreseeing great things to come. He introduced Keats to many prominent men in his circle, including the editor of ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'',
Thomas Barnes; the writer Lamb; the conductor
Vincent Novello
Vincent Novello (6 September 17819 August 1861), was an English musician and music publisher born in London. He was a chorister and organist, but he is best known for bringing to England many works now considered standards, and with his son he cr ...
; and the poet
John Hamilton Reynolds
John Hamilton Reynolds (9 September 1794 – 15 November 1852) was an English poet, satirist, critic, and playwright. He was a close friend and correspondent of poet John Keats, whose letters to Reynolds constitute a significant body of Keats' po ...
, who would become a close friend. Keats also met regularly with
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt (10 April 177818 September 1830) was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English lan ...
, a powerful literary figure of the day. It was a turning point for Keats, establishing him in the public eye as a figure in what Hunt termed "a new school of poetry". At this time Keats wrote to his friend Bailey, "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. What imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth."
This passage would eventually be transmuted into the concluding lines of "
Ode on a Grecian Urn
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819, first published anonymously in ''Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819'' (see 1820 in poetry)''.''
The poem is one of the " Great Odes of 1819", which a ...
": Beauty is truth, truth beauty' – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know". In early December 1816, under the heady influence of his artistic friends, Keats told Abbey he had decided to give up medicine in favour of poetry, to Abbey's fury. Keats had spent a great deal on his medical training, and despite his state of financial hardship and indebtedness, made large loans to friends such as the painter
Benjamin Haydon
Benjamin Robert Haydon (; 26 January 178622 June 1846) was a British painter who specialised in grand historical pictures, although he also painted a few contemporary subjects and portraits. His commercial success was damaged by his often tactle ...
. Keats would go on to lend £700 to his brother George. By lending so much, Keats could no longer cover the interest of his own debts.
Travelling and ill health
Having left his training at the hospital, suffering from a succession of colds, and unhappy with living in damp rooms in London, Keats moved with his brothers into rooms at 1 Well Walk in the village of
Hampstead in April 1817. There John and George nursed their
tubercular brother Tom. The house was close to Hunt and others of his circle in Hampstead, and to
Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...
, respected elder of the first wave of Romantic poets, then living in
Highgate
Highgate ( ) is a suburban area of north London at the northeastern corner of Hampstead Heath, north-northwest of Charing Cross.
Highgate is one of the most expensive London suburbs in which to live. It has two active conservation organisat ...
. On 11 April 1818, Keats reported that he and Coleridge had taken a long walk on
Hampstead Heath. In a letter to his brother George, he wrote that they had talked about "a thousand things,... nightingales, poetry, poetical sensation, metaphysics." Around this time he was introduced to
Charles Wentworth Dilke
Charles Wentworth Dilke (1789–1864) was an English liberal critic and writer on literature.
Professional life
He served for many years in the Navy Pay-Office, on retiring from which in 1830 he devoted himself to literary pursuits.
Lit ...
and James Rice.
In June 1818, Keats began a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland and the
Lake District with
Charles Armitage Brown
Charles Armitage Brown (14 April 1787 – 5 June 1842) was a close friend of the poet John Keats, as well as a friend of artist Joseph Severn, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Walter Savage Landor and Edward John Trelawny. He was the fat ...
. Keats's brother George and his wife Georgina accompanied them to
Lancaster and then continued to
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
, from where they migrated to America, living in
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
and
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...
until 1841, when George's investments failed. Like Keats's other brother, they both died penniless and racked by tuberculosis, for which there was no effective treatment until the next century. In July, while on the
Isle of Mull, Keats caught a bad cold and "was too thin and fevered to proceed on the journey." After returning south in August, Keats continued to nurse Tom, so exposing himself to infection. Some have suggested this was when tuberculosis, his "family disease", took hold.
[O'Neill and Mahoney (1988), p. 418.][Motion (1997), p. 290.] "
Consumption
Consumption may refer to:
*Resource consumption
*Tuberculosis, an infectious disease, historically
* Consumption (ecology), receipt of energy by consuming other organisms
* Consumption (economics), the purchasing of newly produced goods for curren ...
" was not identified as a disease with a single infectious origin until 1820. There was considerable stigma attached to it, as it was often tied with weakness, repressed sexual passion, or masturbation. Keats "refuses to give it a name" in his letters. Tom Keats died on 1 December 1818.
Wentworth Place: annus mirabilis
![J Keats House](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/J_Keats_House.jpg)
John Keats moved to the newly built Wentworth Place, owned by his friend Charles Armitage Brown. It was on the edge of
Hampstead Heath, ten minutes' walk south of his old home in Well Walk. The winter of 1818–19, though a difficult period for the poet, marked the beginning of his ''
annus mirabilis
''Annus mirabilis'' (pl. ''anni mirabiles'') is a Latin phrase that means "marvelous year", "wonderful year", "miraculous year", or "amazing year". This term has been used to refer to several years during which events of major importance are re ...
'' in which he wrote his most mature work.
He had been inspired by a series of recent lectures by Hazlitt on English poets and poetic identity and had also met
Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798).
Wordsworth's '' ...
.
["Keats, John" ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature''. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc.] Keats may have seemed to his friends to be living on comfortable means, but in reality he was borrowing regularly from Abbey and his friends.
He composed five of his
six great odes at Wentworth Place in April and May and, although it is debated in which order they were written, "
Ode to Psyche
"Ode to Psyche" is a poem by John Keats written in spring 1819. The poem is the first of his 1819 odes, which include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale". "Ode to Psyche" is an experiment in the ode genre, and Keats's attempt at ...
" opened the published series. According to Brown, "
Ode to a Nightingale
"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written either in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, London or, according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats' house at Wentworth Place, also ...
" was composed under a plum tree in the garden.
[The original plum tree no longer survives, though others have been planted since.] Brown wrote, "In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast-table to the grass-plot under a plum-tree, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house, I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feelings on the song of our nightingale." Dilke, co-owner of the house, strenuously denied the story, printed in
Richard Monckton Milnes
Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, FRS (19 June 1809 – 11 August 1885) was an English poet, patron of literature and a politician who strongly supported social justice.
Background and education
Milnes was born in London, the son of ...
' 1848 biography of Keats, dismissing it as 'pure delusion'.
"
Ode on a Grecian Urn
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819, first published anonymously in ''Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819'' (see 1820 in poetry)''.''
The poem is one of the " Great Odes of 1819", which a ...
" and "
Ode on Melancholy
"Ode on Melancholy" is one of five odes composed by English poet John Keats in the spring of 1819, along with "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on Indolence", and "Ode to Psyche". The narrative of the poem describes the poet's ...
" were inspired by sonnet forms and probably written after "Ode to a Nightingale".
Keats's new and progressive publishers Taylor and Hessey issued ''
Endymion Endymion primarily refers to:
* Endymion (mythology), an Ancient Greek shepherd
* ''Endymion'' (poem), by John Keats
Endymion may also refer to:
Fictional characters
* Prince Endymion, a character in the ''Sailor Moon'' anime franchise
* Raul ...
'', which Keats dedicated to
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752 – 24 August 1770) was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Altho ...
, a work that he termed "a trial of my Powers of Imagination".
It was damned by the critics, giving rise to Byron's quip that Keats was ultimately "snuffed out by an article", suggesting that he never truly got over it. A particularly harsh review by
John Wilson Croker
John Wilson Croker (20 December 178010 August 1857) was an Anglo-Irish statesman and author.
Life
He was born in Galway, the only son of John Croker, the surveyor-general of customs and excise in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College Dubl ...
appeared in the April 1818 edition of the ''
Quarterly Review
The ''Quarterly Review'' was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967. It was referred to as ''The London Quarterly Review'', as reprinted by Leonard Scott, f ...
''.
[''The Quarterly Review''. April 1818, pp. 204–208. "It is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius – he has all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called 'Cockney Poetry'; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language.... There is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of ideas, but of sounds."] John Gibson Lockhart
John Gibson Lockhart (12 June 1794 – 25 November 1854) was a Scottish writer and editor. He is best known as the author of the seminal, and much-admired, seven-volume biography of his father-in-law Sir Walter Scott: ''Memoirs of the Life of Sir ...
writing in ''
Blackwood's Magazine
''Blackwood's Magazine'' was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the ''Edinburgh Monthly Magazine''. The first number appeared in April 1817 ...
'', described ''Endymion'' as "imperturbable drivelling idiocy". With biting sarcasm, Lockhart advised, "It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes."
[Extracts](_blank)
from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
''Blackwood's Magazine'' was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the ''Edinburgh Monthly Magazine''. The first number appeared in April 1817 ...
, 3 (1818) pp. 519–524. Nineteenth Century Literary Manuscripts, Part 4. Retrieved 29 January 2010. "To witness the disease of any human understanding, however feeble, is distressing; but the spectacle of an able mind reduced to a state of insanity is, of course, ten times more afflicting. It is with such sorrow as this that we have contemplated the case of Mr John Keats.... He was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. But all has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady ... For some time we were in hopes that he might get off with a violent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible. The phrenzy of the "Poems" was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy of ''Endymion''.... It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the pothecaryshop Mr John, back to 'plasters, pills, and ointment boxes' ". It was Lockhart at ''Blackwoods'' who coined the defamatory term "the
Cockney School {{short description, Group of 19th-century English poets and essayists
The "Cockney School" refers to a group of poets and essayists writing in England in the second and third decades of the 19th century. The term came in the form of hostile revie ...
" for Hunt and his circle, which included both Hazlitt and Keats. The dismissal was as much political as literary, aimed at upstart young writers deemed uncouth for their lack of education, non-formal rhyming and "low diction". They had not attended
Eton Eton most commonly refers to Eton College, a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England.
Eton may also refer to:
Places
*Eton, Berkshire, a town in Berkshire, England
* Eton, Georgia, a town in the United States
* Éton, a commune in the Meuse dep ...
,
Harrow or
Oxbridge and they were not from the upper classes.
In 1819 Keats wrote "
The Eve of St. Agnes
''The Eve of St. Agnes'' is a Romantic narrative poem of 42 Spenserian stanzas set in the Middle Ages. It was written by John Keats in 1819 and published in 1820. The poem was considered by many of Keats's contemporaries and the succeeding ...
", "
La Belle Dame sans Merci
"La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy") is a ballad produced by the English poet John Keats in 1819. The title was derived from the title of a 15th-century poem by Alain Chartier called '' La Belle Dame sans Merc ...
", "
Hyperion", "
Lamia
LaMia Corporation S.R.L., operating as LaMia (short for ''Línea Aérea Mérida Internacional de Aviación''), was a Bolivian charter airline headquartered in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, as an EcoJet subsidiary. It had its origins from the failed ...
" and a play, ''Otho the Great'' (critically damned and not performed until 1950). The poems "Fancy" and "Bards of passion and of mirth" were inspired by the garden of Wentworth Place. In September, very short of money and in despair considering taking up journalism or a post as a ship's surgeon, he approached his publishers with a new book of poems.
They were unimpressed with the collection, finding the presented versions of "Lamia" confusing, and describing "St Agnes" as having a "sense of pettish disgust" and "a 'Don Juan' style of mingling up sentiment and sneering" concluding it was "a poem unfit for ladies". The final volume Keats lived to see, ''Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems'', was eventually published in July 1820. It received greater acclaim than had ''Endymion'' or ''Poems'', finding favourable notices in both ''The Examiner'' and ''
Edinburgh Review''. It would come to be recognised as one of the most important poetic works ever published.
Wentworth Place now houses the
Keats House
Keats House is a writer's house museum in what was once the home of the Romantic poet John Keats. It is in Keats Grove, Hampstead, toward the edge of inner north London. Maps before about 1915
show the road with one of its earlier names, Joh ...
museum.
[Kennedy, Maev.]
Keats' London home reopens after major refurbishment
. ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', 22 July 2009. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
Isabella Jones and Fanny Brawne, 1817-1820
Keats befriended Isabella Jones in May 1817, while on holiday in the village of
Bo Peep, near
Hastings
Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England,
east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...
. She is described as beautiful, talented and widely read, not of the top flight of society yet financially secure, an enigmatic figure who would become a part of Keats's circle.
[Motion (1997), pp. 180–181.] Throughout their friendship Keats never hesitated to own his sexual attraction to her, although they seemed to enjoy circling each other rather than offering commitment. He writes that he "frequented her rooms" in the winter of 1818–19, and in his letters to George says that he "warmed with her" and "kissed her".
[Gittings (1968), p. 139.] The trysts may have been a sexual initiation for Keats according to Bate and
Robert Gittings
Robert William Victor Gittings CBE (1 February 1911 – 18 February 1992), was an English writer, biographer, BBC Radio producer, playwright and poet. In 1978, he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for ''The Older Hardy''.
Early life ...
.
Jones inspired and was a steward of Keats's writing. The themes of "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "The Eve of St Mark" may well have been suggested by her, the lyric ''Hush, Hush!''
o sweet Isabel"was about her, and that the first version of "
Bright Star" may have originally been for her. In 1821, Jones was one of the first in England to be notified of Keats's death.
Letters and drafts of poems suggest that Keats first met Frances (Fanny) Brawne between September and November 1818. It is likely that the 18-year-old Brawne visited the Dilke family at Wentworth Place before she lived there. She was born in the hamlet of West End (now in the district of
West Hampstead
West Hampstead is an area in the London Borough of Camden in north-west London. Mainly defined by the railway stations of the same name, it is situated between Childs Hill to the north, Frognal and Hampstead to the north-east, Swiss Cottage ...
), on 9 August 1800. Like Keats's grandfather, her grandfather kept a London inn, and both lost several family members to tuberculosis. She shared her first name with both Keats's sister and mother, and had a talent for dress-making and languages as well as a natural theatrical bent. During November 1818 she developed an intimacy with Keats, but it was shadowed by the illness of Tom Keats, whom John was nursing through this period.
![Fannybrawne](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Fannybrawne.jpg)
On 3 April 1819, Brawne and her widowed mother moved into the other half of Dilke's Wentworth Place, and Keats and Brawne were able to see each other every day. Keats began to lend Brawne books, such as
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...
's ''
Inferno
Inferno may refer to:
* Hell, an afterlife place of suffering
* Conflagration, a large uncontrolled fire
Film
* ''L'Inferno'', a 1911 Italian film
* Inferno (1953 film), ''Inferno'' (1953 film), a film noir by Roy Ward Baker
* Inferno (1973 fi ...
'', and they would read together. He gave her the love sonnet "Bright Star" (perhaps revised for her) as a declaration. It was a work in progress which he continued until the last months of his life, and the poem came to be associated with their relationship. "All his desires were concentrated on Fanny".
[Gittings (1968), pp. 293–298] From this point there is no further documented mention of Isabella Jones.
Sometime before the end of June, he arrived at some sort of understanding with Brawne, far from a formal engagement as he still had too little to offer, with no prospects and financial stricture.
[Gittings (1968), pp. 327–331.] Keats endured great conflict knowing his expectations as a struggling poet in increasingly hard straits would preclude marriage to Brawne. Their love remained unconsummated; jealousy for his 'star' began to gnaw at him. Darkness, disease and depression surrounded him, reflected in poems such as "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci" where love and death both stalk. "I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks;" he wrote to her, "...your loveliness, and the hour of my death".
[
In one of his many hundreds of notes and letters, Keats wrote to Brawne on 13 October 1819: "My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you ... I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder'd at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr'd for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you."
Tuberculosis took hold and he was advised by his doctors to move to a warmer climate. In September 1820 Keats left for Rome knowing he would probably never see Brawne again. After leaving he felt unable to write to her or read her letters, although he did correspond with her mother.] He died there five months later. None of Brawne's letters to Keats survive.
It took a month for the news of his death to reach London, after which Brawne stayed in mourning for six years. In 1833, more than 12 years after his death, she married and went on to have three children; she outlived Keats by more than 40 years.
Last months: Rome, 1820
During 1820 Keats displayed increasingly serious symptoms of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
, suffering two lung haemorrhages in the first few days of February. On first coughing up blood, on 3 February 1820, he said to Charles Armitage Brown, "I know the colour of that blood! It is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour. That drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die."
He lost large amounts of blood and was bled further by the attending physician. Hunt nursed him in London for much of the following summer. At the suggestion of his doctors, he agreed to move to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. On 13 September, they left for Gravesend and four days later boarded the sailing brig ''Maria Crowther''. On 1 October the ship landed at Lulworth Bay or Holworth Bay, where the two went ashore; back on board ship he made the final revisions of "Bright Star". The journey was a minor catastrophe: storms broke out, followed by a dead calm that slowed the ship's progress. When they finally docked in Naples, the ship was held in quarantine for ten days due to a suspected outbreak of cholera in Britain. Keats reached Rome on 14 November, by which time any hope of the warmer climate he sought had disappeared.
Keats wrote his last letter on 30 November 1820 to Charles Armitage Brown; "Tis the most difficult thing in the world to me to write a letter. My stomach continues so bad, that I feel it worse on opening any book – yet I am much better than I was in Quarantine. Then I am afraid to encounter the proing and conning of any thing interesting to me in England. I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence".
On arrival in Italy, he moved into a villa on the Spanish Steps
The Spanish Steps ( it, Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti) in Rome, Italy, climb a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church, at the top.
The monumental stairwa ...
in Rome, today the Keats–Shelley Memorial House
The Keats–Shelley Memorial House is a writer's house museum in Rome, Italy, commemorating the Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The museum houses one of the world's most extensive collections of memorabilia, letters, manuscri ...
museum. Despite care from Severn and Dr. James Clark, his health rapidly deteriorated. The medical attention Keats received may have hastened his death. In November 1820, Clark declared that the source of his illness was "mental exertion" and that the source was largely situated in his stomach. Clark eventually diagnosed consumption (tuberculosis) and placed Keats on a starvation diet of an anchovy and a piece of bread a day intended to reduce the blood flow to his stomach. He also bled the poet: a standard treatment of the day, but also likely a significant contributor to Keats's weakness.[Flood, Alison]
Doctor's mistakes to blame for Keats' agonising end, says new biography
. ''The Guardian'', 26 October 2009. Retrieved 29 January 2010. Severn's biographer Sue Brown writes: "They could have used opium in small doses, and Keats had asked Severn to buy a bottle of opium when they were setting off on their voyage. What Severn didn't realise was that Keats saw it as a possible resource if he wanted to commit suicide. He tried to get the bottle from Severn on the voyage but Severn wouldn't let him have it. Then in Rome he tried again.... Severn was in such a quandary he didn't know what to do, so in the end he went to the doctor, who took it away. As a result Keats went through dreadful agonies with nothing to ease the pain at all." Keats was angry with both Severn and Clark when they would not give him laudanum (opium). He repeatedly demanded, "How long is this posthumous existence of mine to go on?"
Death, 1821
The first months of 1821 marked a slow and steady decline into the final stage of tuberculosis. His autopsy showed his lung almost disintegrated. Keats was coughing up blood and covered in sweat. Severn nursed him devotedly and observed in a letter how Keats would sometimes cry upon waking to find himself still alive. Severn writes,
John Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821. His body was buried in the city's Protestant Cemetery. His last request was to be placed under a tombstone bearing no name or date, only the words, "Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water." Severn and Brown erected the stone, which under a relief of a lyre with broken strings, includes the epitaph:
The text bears an echo from Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His ...
LXX:
Francis Beaumont also used the expression in ''The Nice Valour'', Act 5, scene 5 (? 1616):
Severn and Brown added their lines to the stone in protest at the critical reception of Keats's work. Hunt blamed his death on the ''Quarterly Review''s scathing attack of "Endymion". As Byron quipped in his narrative poem ''Don Juan
Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni ( Italian), is a legendary, fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. Famous versions of the story include a 17th-century play, ''El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra'' ...
'';
Seven weeks after the funeral, Shelley memorialised Keats in his poem ''Adonais''. Clark saw to a planting of daisies on the grave, saying Keats would have wished it. For public health reasons, the Italian health authorities burnt the furniture in Keats's room, scraped the walls and made new windows, doors and flooring. The ashes of Shelley, one of Keats's most fervent champions, are buried in the cemetery and Joseph Severn is buried next to Keats. On the site today, Marsh wrote, "In the old part of the graveyard, barely a field when Keats was buried here, there are now umbrella pines, myrtle shrubs, roses, and carpets of wild violets".["A window to the soul of John Keats" by Marsh, Stefanie.](_blank)
''The Times'', 2 November 2009. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
Reception
When Keats died at 25, he had been writing poetry seriously for only about six years, from 1814 until the summer of 1820, and publishing for only four. In his lifetime, sales of Keats's three volumes of poetry probably amounted to only 200 copies. His first poem, the sonnet ''O Solitude'', appeared in ''the Examiner'' in May 1816, while his collection ''Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other poems'' was published in July 1820 before his last visit to Rome. The compression of his poetic apprenticeship and maturity into so short a time is just one remarkable aspect of Keats's work.
Although prolific during his short career, and now one of the most studied and admired British poets, his reputation rests on a small body of work, John Keats's 1819 odes, centred on the Odes, and only in the creative outpouring of the last years of his short life was he able to express the inner intensity for which he has been lauded since his death.[Walsh (1957), pp. 220–221.] Keats was convinced that he had made no mark in his lifetime. Aware that he was dying, he wrote to Fanny Brawne in February 1820, "I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd."
Keats's ability and talent was acknowledged by several influential contemporary allies such as Shelley and Hunt. His admirers praised him for thinking "on his pulses", for having developed a style which was more heavily loaded with sensualities, more gorgeous in its effects, more voluptuously alive than any poet who had come before him: "loading every rift with ore". Shelley often corresponded with Keats in Rome and loudly declared that Keats's death had been brought on by bad reviews in the ''Quarterly Review''. Seven weeks after the funeral he wrote ''Adonais'', a despairing elegy, stating that Keats's early death was a personal and public tragedy:
Although Keats wrote that "if poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all," poetry did not come easily to him; his work was the fruit of a deliberate and prolonged classical self-education. He may have possessed an innate poetic sensibility, but his early works were clearly those of a young man learning his craft. His first attempts at verse were often vague, languorously narcotic and lacking a clear eye. His poetic sense was based on the conventional tastes of his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, who first introduced him to the classics, and also came from the predilections of Hunt's ''Examiner'', which Keats read as a boy.[Gittings (1987), pp. 18–21.] Hunt scorned the Augustan literature, Augustan or "French" school dominated by Alexander Pope, Pope and attacked earlier Romantic poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, now in their forties, as unsophisticated, obscure and crude writers. Indeed, during Keats's few years as a published poet, the reputation of the older Romantic school was at its lowest ebb. Keats came to echo these sentiments in his work, identifying himself with a "new school" for a time, somewhat alienating him from Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron and providing a basis for scathing attacks from ''Blackwood's'' and the ''Quarterly Review''.
By his death, Keats had therefore been associated with the taints of both old and new schools: the obscurity of first-wave Romantics and uneducated affectation of Hunt's "Cockney School". Keats's posthumous reputation mixed the reviewers' caricature of the simplistic bumbler with the image of a hyper-sensitive genius killed by high feeling, which Shelley later portrayed.
The Victorian sense of poetry as the work of indulgence and luxuriant fancy offered a schema into which Keats was posthumously fitted. Marked as the standard-bearer of sensory writing, his reputation grew steadily and remarkably. His work had the full support of the influential Cambridge Apostles, whose members included the young Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tennyson,[Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tennyson was writing Keats-style poetry in the 1830s and was being critically attacked in the same manner as his predecessor.] later a popular Poet Laureate who came to regard Keats as the greatest poet of the 19th century. Constance Naden was a great admirer of his poems, arguing that his genius lay in his 'exquisite sensitiveness to all the elements of beauty'. In 1848, twenty-seven years after Keats's death, Richard Monckton Milnes
Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, FRS (19 June 1809 – 11 August 1885) was an English poet, patron of literature and a politician who strongly supported social justice.
Background and education
Milnes was born in London, the son of ...
published the first full biography, which helped place Keats within the canon of English literature. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including John Everett Millais, Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Rossetti, were inspired by Keats and painted scenes from his poems including "The Eve of St. Agnes", "Isabella" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci", lush, arresting and popular images which remain closely associated with Keats's work.
In 1882, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Swinburne wrote in the ''Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'' that "the Ode to a Nightingale [was] one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages". In the 20th century Keats remained the muse of poets such as Wilfred Owen, who kept his death date as a day of mourning, Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Critic Helen Vendler stated the odes "are a group of works in which the English language find ultimate embodiment." Jonathan Bate, Bate said of ''To Autumn'': "Each generation has found it one of the most nearly perfect poems in English" and M. R. Ridley claimed the ode "is the most serenely flawless poem in our language."
The largest collection of the letters, manuscripts, and other papers of Keats is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Other collections of material are archived at the British Library, Keats House
Keats House is a writer's house museum in what was once the home of the Romantic poet John Keats. It is in Keats Grove, Hampstead, toward the edge of inner north London. Maps before about 1915
show the road with one of its earlier names, Joh ...
, Hampstead, the Keats–Shelley Memorial House
The Keats–Shelley Memorial House is a writer's house museum in Rome, Italy, commemorating the Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The museum houses one of the world's most extensive collections of memorabilia, letters, manuscri ...
in Rome and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Since 1998 the British Keats-Shelley Memorial Association have annually awarded a Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry, prize for romantic poetry. A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque was unveiled in 1896 to commemorate Keats at Keats House.
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...
named his first encounter with Keats an experience he felt all his life.
Biographers
None of Keats's biographies were written by people who had known him. Shortly after his death, his publishers announced they would speedily publish ''The memoirs and remains of John Keats'' but his friends refused to cooperate and argued with each other to such an extent that the project was abandoned. Leigh Hunt's ''Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries'' (1828) gives the first biographical account, strongly emphasising Keats's supposedly humble origins, a misconception which still continues. Given that he was becoming a significant figure within artistic circles, a succession of other publications followed, including anthologies of his many notes, chapters and letters.[Gittings (1968), p. 3.] However, early accounts often gave contradictory or biased versions of events and were subject to dispute. His friends Brown, Severn, Dilke, Shelley and his guardian Richard Abbey, his publisher Taylor, Fanny Brawne and many others issued posthumous commentary on Keats's life. These early writings coloured all subsequent biography and have become embedded in a body of Keats legend.
Shelley promoted Keats as someone whose achievement could not be separated from agony, who was 'spiritualised' by his decline and too fine-tuned to endure the harshness of life; the consumptive, suffering image popularly held today. The first full biography was published in 1848 by Richard Monckton Milnes. Landmark Keats biographers since include Sidney Colvin, Robert Gittings
Robert William Victor Gittings CBE (1 February 1911 – 18 February 1992), was an English writer, biographer, BBC Radio producer, playwright and poet. In 1978, he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for ''The Older Hardy''.
Early life ...
, Walter Jackson Bate, Aileen Ward, and Andrew Motion. The idealised image of the heroic romantic poet who battled poverty and died young was inflated by the late arrival of an authoritative biography and the lack of an accurate likeness. Most of the surviving portraits of Keats were painted after his death, and those who knew him held that they did not succeed in capturing his unique quality and intensity.
Other portrayals
''John Keats: His Life and Death'', the first major motion picture about the life of Keats, was produced in 1973 by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. It was directed by John Barnes (film producer), John Barnes. John Stride played John Keats and Janina Faye played Fanny Brawne.
The 2009 film ''Bright Star (film), Bright Star'', written and directed by Jane Campion, focuses on Keats's relationship with Fanny Brawne. Inspired by the 1997 Keats biography penned by Andrew Motion, it stars Ben Whishaw as Keats and Abbie Cornish as Fanny.
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage wrote "'I speak as someone...'" to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Keats's death. It was first published in ''The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' on 20 February 2021.[ ''Includes full text of poem'']
In 2007 a sculpture of Keats seated on bench, by sculptor Stuart Williamson, at St Thomas' Hospital, Guys and Saint Thomas' Hospital, London, was unveiled by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion.
Letters
Keats's letters were first published in 1848 and 1878. Critics in the 19th century disregarded them as distractions from his poetic works, but in the 20th century they became almost as admired and studied as his poetry, and are highly regarded in the canon of English literary correspondence. T. S. Eliot called them "certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet." Keats spent much time considering poetry itself, its constructs and impacts, displaying a deep interest unusual in his milieu, who were more easily distracted by metaphysics or politics, fashions or science. Eliot wrote of Keats's conclusions; "There is hardly one statement of Keats' about poetry which... will not be found to be true, and what is more, true for greater and more mature poetry than anything Keats ever wrote."[Gittings (1987), pp. 12–17.]
Few of Keats's letters remain from the period before he joined his literary circle. From spring 1817, however, there is a rich record of his prolific and impressive letter-writing skills. He and his friends, poets, critics, novelists, and editors wrote to each other daily, and Keats's ideas are bound up in the ordinary, his day-to-day missives sharing news, parody and social commentary. They glitter with humour and critical intelligence. Born of an "unself-conscious stream of consciousness," they are impulsive, full of awareness of his own nature and his weak spots. When his brother George went to America, Keats wrote to him in detail, the body of letters becoming "the real diary" and self-revelation of Keats's life, as well as an exposition of his philosophy, with the first drafts of poems containing some of Keats's finest writing and thought. Gittings sees them as akin to a "spiritual journal" not written for a specific other, so much as for synthesis.
Keats also reflected on the background and composition of his poetry. Specific letters often coincide with or anticipate the poems they describe. In February to May 1819 he produced many of his finest letters. Writing to his brother George, Keats explored the idea of the world as "the vale of Soul-making", anticipating the great odes he wrote some months later. In the letters Keats coined ideas such as the Mansion of Many Apartments and the Chameleon Poet, which came to gain common currency and capture the public imagination, though only making single appearances as phrases in his correspondence. The poetical mind, Keats argued:
has no self – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade;... What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion [chameleon] Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity – he is continually in for – and filling some other Body – The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none; no identity – he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures.
He used the term negative capability to discuss the state of being in which we are "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.... [Being] content with half knowledge" where one trusts in the heart's perceptions. He wrote later he was "certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not – for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty" constantly returning to what it means to be a poet.[O'Neill and Mahoney (1988), p. 419.] "My Imagination is a Monastery and I am its Monk", Keats notes to Shelley. In September 1819, Keats wrote to Reynolds Reynolds may refer to:
Places Australia
*Hundred of Reynolds, a cadastral unit in South Australia
*Hundred of Reynolds (Northern Territory), a cadastral unit in the Northern Territory of Australia
United States
* Reynolds, Mendocino County, Calif ...
"How beautiful the season is now – How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it.... I never lik'd the stubbled fields as much as now – Aye, better than the chilly green of spring. Somehow the stubble plain looks warm – in the same way as some pictures look warm – this struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it".[Houghton (2008), 184] The final stanza of his last great ode, "To Autumn", runs:
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
"To Autumn" was to become one of the most highly regarded poems in the English language.[Bate p. 581: "Each generation has found it one of the most nearly perfect poems in English."][The 1888 '']Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'' declared that, "Of these [odes] perhaps the two nearest to absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that of to Autumn and that on a Grecian Urn" Thomas Baynes, ed. ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Vol. XIV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1888. , p. 23.
There are areas of his life and daily routine that Keats omits. He mentions little of his childhood or his financial straits, being seemingly embarrassed to discuss them. There is no reference to his parents. In his last year, as his health deteriorated, his concerns often give way to despair and morbid obsessions. His letters to Fanny Brawne, published in 1870, focus on the period and emphasise its tragic aspect, giving rise to widespread criticism at the time.
Major works
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*Susan Wolfson, ed., ''John Keats'' (London and New York: Longman, 2007)
*Miriam Allott, ed., ''The Complete Poems'' (London and New York: Longman, 1970)
*Grant F. Scott, ed., ''Selected Letters of John Keats'' (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002)
*Jack Stillinger, ed., ''John Keats: Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard, a Facsimile Edition'' (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990)
*Jack Stillinger, ed., ''The Poems of John Keats'' (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978)
*Hyder Edward Rollins, ed., ''The Letters of John Keats 1814–1821,'' 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958)
*H. Buxton Forman, ed., ''The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats'' (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1907)
*Horace Scudder, Horace E. Scudder, ed., ''The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats'' (Boston: Riverside Press, 1899)
Notes
References
Sources
*Walter Jackson Bate, Bate, Walter Jackson (1964). ''John Keats''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
*Walter Jackson Bate, Bate, Walter Jackson (2009). ''John Keats''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
*Bate, Walter Jackson (2012). ''Negative Capability: The Intuitive Approach in Keats'' (1965), reprinted with a new intro by Maura Del Serra. New York: Contra Mundum Press, 2012.
*Charles Armitage Brown, Brown, Charles Armitage (1937). ''The Life of John Keats'', ed. London: Oxford University Press.
*Brown, Sue (2009). ''Joseph Severn, A Life: The Rewards of Friendship''. Oxford University Press
*Chapman, D. (2012). ''What's in an Urn?'', Concept,
*Colvin, Sidney (1917). ''John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends Critics and After-Fame''. London: Macmillan
*Colvin, Sidney (1970). ''John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics, and After-Fame''. New York: Octagon Books
*Coote, Stephen (1995). ''John Keats. A Life''. London: Hodder & Stoughton
*De Almeida, Hermione (1991). ''Romantic Medicine and John Keats''. New York: Oxford University Press.
*Robert Gittings, Gittings, Robert (1954). ''John Keats: The Living Year. 21 September 1818 to 21 September 1819''. London: Heinemann.
*Gittings, Robert (1964). ''The Keats Inheritance''. London: Heinemann
*Gittings, Robert (1968). ''John Keats''. London: Heinemann
*Gittings, Robert (1987) ''Selected poems and letters of Keats'' London: Heinemann
*Goslee, Nancy (1985). ''Uriel's Eye: Miltonic Stationing and Statuary in Blake, Keats and Shelley''. University of Alabama Press
*Hewlett, Dorothy (3rd rev. ed. 1970). ''A life of John Keats''. London: Hutchinson.
*Hirsch, Edward (Ed.) (2001). ''Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats''. Random House Publishing.
*Houghton, Richard (Ed.) (2008). ''The Life and Letters of John Keats''. Read Books
*
*Lachman, Lilach (1988). "History and Temporalization of Space: Keats' Hyperion Poems". ''Proceedings of the XII Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association'', edited by Roger Bauer and Douwe Fokkema (Munich, Germany): 159–164
*G. M. Matthews (Ed). (1995). "John Keats: The Critical Heritage". London: Routledge
*Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, Monckton Milnes, Richard, ed. (Lord Houghton) (1848). ''Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats''. 2 vols. London: Edward Moxon
*Andrew Motion, Motion, Andrew (1997). ''Keats''. London: Faber
*O'Neill, Michael & Mahoney Charles (Eds.) (2007). ''Romantic Poetry: An Annotated Anthology''. Blackwell
*Ridley, M. and R. Clarendon (1933). ''Keats' craftsmanship: a study in poetic development'' (Out of Print in 2010)
*Scott, Grant F. (1994). ''The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts''. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
*Stillinger, Jack (1982). ''Complete Poems''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
*Strachan, John (Ed.) (2003). ''A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on the Poems of John Keats''. New York: Routledge
*Helen Vendler, Vendler, Helen (1983). ''The Odes of John Keats''. Belknap Press
*John Evangelist Walsh, Walsh, John Evangelist (1999). ''Darkling I Listen: The Last Days and Death of John Keats''. New York: St. Martin's Press
*William Walsh (academic), Walsh, William (1957). "John Keats", in ''From Blake to Byron''. Middlesex: Penguin
*Ward, Aileen (1963). ''John Keats: The Making of a Poet''. London: Secker & Warburg
*Wolfson, Susan J. (1986). ''The Questioning Presence''. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press
Further reading
*Bate, Walter Jackson. ''Negative Capability: The Intuitive Approach in Keats''. New York: Contra Mundum Press, 2012
*Cox, Jeffrey N. ''Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and Their Circle''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004
*Kirkland, John (2008). ''Love Letters of Great Men, Vol. 1''. CreateSpace Publishing
*Kottoor, Gopikrishnan (1994). ''The Mask of Death: The Final Days of John Keats, (A Radio Play)''. Writers WorkShop Kolkata, 1994
*Amy Lowell, Lowell, Amy (1925). ''John Keats''. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
*Parson, Donald (1954). ''Portraits of Keats''. Cleveland: World Publishing Co.
*Plumly, Stanley (2008). ''Posthumous Keats''. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
*Joanna Richardson, Richardson, Joanna (1963). ''The Everlasting Spell. A Study of Keats and His Friends''. London: Cape
*Richardson, Joanna (1980). ''Keats and His Circle. An Album of Portraits''. London: Cassell
*Nicholas Roe, Roe, Nicholas (2012). ''John Keats. A New Life''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press
*William Michael Rossetti, Rossetti, William Michael (1887). ''The Life and Writings of John Keats''. London: Walter Scott
*Richard Marggraf Turley, Turley, Richard Marggraf (2004). ''Keats' Boyish Imagination''. London: Routledge,
External links
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John Keats
on the British Library's Discovering Literature website
John Keats
at the Poetry Foundation
Biography of Keats at poets.org
The Harvard Keats Collection
at the Houghton Library, Harvard University
Keats House, Hampstead: official website
The Keats-Shelley House museum in Rome
John Keats
at the National Portrait Gallery, London, National Portrait Gallery
Keats, John (1795–1821) Poet
at the National Register of Archives
Mapping Keats's Progress: A Critical Chronology
{{DEFAULTSORT:Keats, John
1795 births
1821 deaths
19th-century English writers
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Alumni of King's College London
Burials in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome
19th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Epic poets
English letter writers
People from the City of London
Romantic poets
Sonneteers
Writers from London
19th-century English poets
English male poets
19th-century male writers
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