John Keats

John Keats: biography

John Keats is widely regarded as one of the great Romantic poets, alongside figures such as William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. The poet was born to Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats on the 31^st October 1795. He was the eldest of five siblings, with three brothers and a sister. His brother Edward died shortly after he was born, but John, George, and Fanny Keats survived infancy.

John Keats’ father was the head livery stable-keeper at The Swan and Hoop Inn. Upon marrying his employer’s daughter, Frances, he was given the role of manager and later inherited the business. Although there is no evidence, it is widely believed that John Keats was born in his maternal grandfather’s stable at The Swan and Hoop, which bears an official blue plaque commemorating his birth.

John Keats attended an academy in the town of Enfield from the age of eight. He enjoyed a comfortable and secure upbringing until his father died from a head injury after falling off his horse when John Keats was just nine years old. His mother remarried within just two months, leaving her recently bereaved children in the care of her mother, Alice Jennings.

This second marriage proved to be disastrous, ending in legal separation within a few short years. When John Keats was fifteen, Frances died of tuberculosis. Alice Jennings was now the legal guardian of her orphaned grandchildren, but being elderly, she decided to share guardianship with Richard Abbey and John Sandell.

Discovering poetry

Amongst all this upheaval, young Keats applied himself well at school, which provided him with a familiar routine and structure. He became close friends with the headteacher’s son Charles Cowden Clark, and the headteacher was fond of him, too. He won an essay contest and made challenging translations from Latin and Greek.

In 1811, John Keats left school and entered an apprenticeship with Thomas Hammond, a local surgeon. However, the Clarke family continued to encourage and nurture his literary talents, engaging him in discussions of books and lending him volumes from their library, such as Edmund Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queen’ (1519). His former headteacher also introduced him to left-wing politics, lending him The Examiner, a weekly magazine that contained radical ideology and even criticised the Prince Regent.

In 1814, Keats’ elderly grandmother died, and his legal guardian Abbey was miserly with the distribution of the Keats sibling’s inheritance, which he held in trust. In the summer of 1816, Keats qualified as an apothecary and began work as a dresser, undertaking tasks such as setting bones and restraining patients during surgery.

That October, he was introduced to the poet and co-founder of The Examiner, Leigh Hunt, who read his poetry and gave him feedback. The two became firm friends. He would often spend his days working hard as a dresser and his evenings in Hunt’s house, a hive of literary energy. There, he enjoyed the company of Hunt’s circle of writers and artists, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Keats, Shelley, and Hunt also engaged in timed sonnet-writing competitions, which produced works such as Keats’ ‘On the Grasshopper and Cricket’ (1816).

Combining his medical work with serious writing exhausted Keats. Soon after his 21^st birthday, he made the decision to quit his job at Guy’s Hospital and dedicate his time exclusively to poetry.

John Keats’ brother George introduced him to George Felton Mathew. He formed a short-lived but significant literary friendship with this poet, dedicating the poem ‘To George Felton Mathew’ (1817) to him.

Keats had his first volume of poetry published in 1817. Unfortunately, the book sold abysmally and received poor reviews. Keats’ next publication, ‘Endymion’ (1818), had an even worse reception than Poems (1817). Critics such as John Gibson Lockhart made personal attacks on the poet’s socioeconomic background in addition to mocking the contents of his poetic works.

Illness and death

In the winter of 1818, Keats nursed his brother Tom, who was sick with tuberculosis. Despite his best efforts, Tom died on 1^st December 1818. It is widely believed that Keats contracted tuberculosis from caring for Tom. After his brother’s death, Keats’ friend Charles Brown invited him to live with him in Wentworth Place.

Whilst staying with Charles Brown, Keats met Fanny Brawne, and the two fell in love. Passionate love letters between the two were later published. They were engaged but never married. The year 1819 is often referred to as his ‘Great Year’ because he wrote a large body of poetry, which is now considered to be his greatest works. However, Keats did not achieve literary acclaim during his lifetime.

Although he had been unhealthily pale for some time, in 1820, Keats began to experience some of the more serious symptoms of tuberculosis, including lung haemorrhages. Following his doctor’s suggestion, he travelled to Rome by sea for his health. The warmer climate was considered healthier. His friend Joseph Severn accompanied him. In Rome, Keats received medical treatments, such as leaching and a starvation diet, which would have made him weaker. A few months after arriving in Rome, the poet died, like his mother and brother before him, of tuberculosis.

There is some dispute as to the exact date of his death. Most scholars and biographers believe he died at 11 pm in the evening on 23^rd February, and there are letters to confirm this. However, his gravestone bears the date 24^th. This is likely due to the contemporary Italian practice of attributing evening deaths to the next day.

John Keats: timeline summary

• John Keats was born on the 31^st October 1795 in the Moorgate area of London.
• He attended a school in Enfield from the age of eight.
• His father died on the 15^th April 1804, when Keats was nine.
• In 1804, his mother left the family and married William Rawlings.
• His mother died of tuberculosis in February 1810 when Keats was fifteen.
• Keats left the academy in Enfield in 1811 and started his apprenticeship with surgeon Thomas Hammond.
• His grandmother died in December 1814.
• On the 1^st October 1815, John Keats entered Guy’s Hospital as a medical student.
• On the 25^th July 1816, he successfully qualified as an apothecary and began work as a dresser, a type of junior doctor.
• Shortly after his 21^st birthday, he left the medical profession to dedicate his time to his writing.
• He had his first volume of poetry, ‘Poems’ (1817), published.
• His second poetic work, ‘Endymion’ (1818), was published.
• In 1818, his brother Thomas died of tuberculosis.
• 1819 is known as the poet’s ‘Great Year’. He published what are widely considered his best works of poetry.
• On 20^th September 1820, Keats travelled to Rome on the advice of his doctor.
• He died of tuberculosis in Rome in February 1821.

John Keats: historical context

John Keats lived through interesting and turbulent times that challenged the established order of British society. For example, the recent French Revolution posed a threat to the British monarchy, as there were fears that the British public would be inspired to do the same, especially since King George III suffered from mental illness and the Prince Regent was an unpopular substitute. This fear led to trials for the offence of treason and even executions.

Keats placed a black mark upon his own poetic career when he decided to openly support Leigh Hunt, who had been jailed for slandering the Prince Regent, in his first published volume of poetry. Many literary critics at the time disapproved of this.

John Keats: biographical context

The unrequited love and sickness in ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ (1819) may have been inspired by his relationship with Fanny Brawne and the poet’s own deteriorating health. Keats died of tuberculosis, and victims of this illness were often referred to as ‘consumptive’. As with the doomed knight in his poem, this caused a death-like pallor.

During John and Fanny’s early courtship, the poet complained that she was too much of a flirt, and he was jealous of the other men she danced with. At times, he may have felt his feelings were one-sided, like the knight’s feelings for the fairy.

John Keats and romanticism

John Keats belonged to what are known as Romantic poets. These are poets belonging to the Romantic period. Features of Romanticism are significant in the poetic works of John Keats. For example, his ‘On Autumn’ is an Ode to the season of autumn, which is marked by a bountiful harvest and a resplendent change in the colour of flora in the English countryside, which Keats attempts to capture in his poetic expression.

John Keats’ friendships with other poets

John Keats formed several important friendships that inspired and encouraged his poetic development. Among his friends were:

• Percy Bysshe Shelley.
• Leigh Hunt.
• George Felton Mathew.

John Keats’s notable poems

During his short lifetime, Keats published fifty-four poems. Here is a selection of notable poems from his ‘Great Year’ of 1819:

• ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819).
• ‘Ode on Indolence’ (1819).
• ‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1819).
• ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1819).
• ‘Ode to Psyche’ (1819).

Fig. 2 - Keat's drawing of an engraving of the Sosibios Vase.

John Keats: ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819)

The subject of exaltation and praise in this ode is the nightingale and its song. This ode consists of eight stanzas. The first seven are ten lines in length and in iambic pentameter, giving them a sense of uniformity. The final stanza is also ten lines long but, unlike the others, is written in iambic trimeter. This shift in form reflects the shift in subject. The final stanza deals with the nightingale leaving, the speaker’s reluctant return to humanity, and his questioning of reality.

The poet expresses an idealised perception of the life of the nightingale in the forest and the life of man in the city through contrasting synonyms for joy and misery.

John Keats: ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (1819)

The title of this poem means ‘the beautiful lady without mercy’. It is a ballad that consists of twelve stanzas, each of which contains four lines (quatrains). The poem tells a story inspired by traditional British folk tales featuring young men and women lured to the fairy realm.

In this ballad, a young knight falls in love with a beautiful but dangerous fairy woman. However, his love was not reciprocated. After falling asleep in her grotto, he finds himself alone and sickly in a bleak, lifeless landscape, and he realises he has been tricked like many before him.

Themes in John Keats’ work

Keats’ poetry is known to cover a variety of themes, often with opposing concepts, such as joy and melancholy, or mortality and immortality.

1. Nature: Keats had a deep appreciation for nature and often used it as a source of inspiration in his poetry. He frequently wrote about the beauty and power of natural landscapes, as well as the cycles of life and death that are inherent in the natural world.

2. Beauty: Keats believed that beauty was an essential aspect of life and that it could be found in many different forms. He often celebrated the beauty of the natural world, as well as the beauty of art and literature.

3. Love: Love is a recurring theme in Keats' poetry. He wrote about the joys and pains of love, the fleeting nature of romance, and the power of desire and longing.

4. Mortality: Keats was acutely aware of the transience of life and the inevitability of death. He frequently wrote about the fleeting nature of human existence and the desire to leave a lasting legacy through art and poetry.

5. Imagination and creativity: Keats believed that imagination and creativity were essential to a fulfilling life. He celebrated the power of the imagination to transport us to new worlds and to help us find meaning in the world around us.

Keats' poetry is characterized by its lyricism, its focus on sensory experience, and its celebration of the beauty and richness of life