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John Keats
John Keats
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Occupation	Poet
Literary movement	Romantic
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John Keats (/ˈkiːts/; 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. During his short life, his work received constant critical attacks from periodicals of the day, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson has been immense. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize Keats's poetry, including a series of odes that were his masterpieces and which remain among the most popular poems in English literature. Keats's letters, which expound on his aesthetic theory of "negative capability"^[1], are among the most celebrated by any writer.

Life

John Keats was born in 1795 at 85 Moorgate in London, where his father, Thomas Keats, was an hostler. The pub is now called 'Keats at the Globe', only a few yards from Moorgate station. Keats was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and lived happily for the first seven years of his life. The beginnings of his troubles occurred in 1804, when his father died of a fractured skull after falling from his horse. A year later, in 1805, Keats' grandfather died. His mother, Frances Jennings Keats, remarried soon afterwards, but quickly left the new husband and moved herself and her four children (a son had died in infancy) to live with Keats's grandmother, Alice Jennings. There, Keats attended a school that first instilled a love of literature in him. In 1810, however, his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving him and his siblings in the custody of their grandmother.

Keats's grandmother appointed two guardians to take care of her new "charges", and these guardians removed Keats from his old school to become a surgeon's apprentice at Thomas Hammond's apothecary shop in Edmonton ^[2] (now part of the London Borough of Enfield). This continued until 1814, when, after a fight with his master, he left his apprenticeship and became a student at Guy's Hospital (now part of King's College London). During that year, he devoted more and more of his time to the study of literature. Keats traveled to the Isle of Wight in the spring of 1819, where he spent a week. Later that year he stayed in Winchester. It was here that Keats wrote Isabella, St. Agnes' Eve and Lamia. Parts of Hyperion and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho The Great were also written in Winchester.

Following the death of his grandmother, he soon found his brother, Tom Keats, entrusted to his care. Tom was suffering, as his mother had, from tuberculosis. Finishing his epic poem "Endymion", Keats left to work in Scotland and Ireland with his friend Charles Armitage Brown. However, he too began to show signs of tuberculosis infection on that trip, and returned prematurely. When he did, he found that Tom's condition had deteriorated, and that Endymion had, as had Poems before it, been the target of much abuse from the critics. On 1 December 1818, Tom Keats died of his disease, and John Keats moved again, to live in Brown's house in Hampstead, next to Hampstead Heath. There he lived next door to Fanny Brawne, who had been staying there with her mother. He then quickly fell in love with Fanny. However, it was overall an unhappy affair for the poet; Keats's ardour for her seemed to bring him more vexation than comfort. The later (posthumous) publication of their correspondence was to scandalise Victorian society. In the diary of Fanny Brawne was found only one sentence regarding the separation: "Mr. Keats has left Hampstead." Fanny's letters to Keats were, as the poet had requested, destroyed upon his death. However, in 1937, a collection of 31 letters, written by Fanny Brawne to Keats's sister, Frances, were published by Oxford University Press. These letters revealed the depth of Brawne's feelings toward Keats and in many ways attempted to redeem her rather promiscuous reputation, it is arguable whether or not they succeeded.

This relationship was cut short when, by 1820, Keats began showing serious signs of tuberculosis, the disease that had plagued his family. On the suggestion of his doctors, he left the cold airs of London behind and moved to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. Keats moved into a house, which is now a museum that is dedicated to his life and work, The Keats-Shelley House, on the Spanish Steps, in Rome, where despite attentive care from Severn and Dr. John Clark, the poet's health rapidly deteriorated. He died in 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request was to be buried under a tombstone reading, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." His name was not to appear on the stone. Despite these requests, however, Severn and Brown also added the epitaph: "This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone" along with the image of a lyre with broken strings.

The Spanish Steps, Rome, Italy, seen from Piazza di Spagna. John Keats died in the house in the right foreground, which is now a museum.

Shelley blamed his death on an article published shortly before in the Quarterly Review, with a scathing attack on Keats's Endymion. The offending article was long believed to have been written by William Gifford, though later shown to be the work of John Wilson Croker. Keats's death inspired Shelley to write the poem Adonais.'; Byron later composed a short poem on this theme using the phrase "snuffed out by an article." However Byron, far less admiring of Keats's poetry than Shelley and generally more cynical in nature, was here probably just as much poking fun at Shelley's interpretation as he was having a dig at his old fencing partners the critics. (see below, Byron's other less than serious poem on the same subject).

The largest collection of Keats's letters, manuscripts, and other papers is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Other collections of such material can be found at the British Library; Keats House, Hampstead; The Keats-Shelley House, Rome; and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

Works

Addressed to Haydon (1816) text
Addressed to the Same (1816) text
After dark vapours have oppressed our plains (1817)
As from the darkening gloom a silver dove (1814)
Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl! text
A Song About Myself
Bards of Passion and of Mirth text
Before he went to live with owls and bats (1817?)
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art (1819)
Calidore: A Fragment (1816)
The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone
Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq.
A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode Of Paolo And Francesca text
A Draught of Sunshine
Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1817)
Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds
Epistle to My Brother George
The Eve of Saint Mark
The Eve of St. Agnes (1819) text
The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (1817)
Fancy (poem)
Fill for me a brimming bowl (1814) text
Fragment of an Ode to Maia
Had I a man's fair form, then might my sighs (1815 or 1816)
Hadst thou liv’d in days of old (1816)
Give me women, wine, and snuff (1815 or 1816)
God of the golden bow (1816 or 1817)
The Gothic looks solemn (1817)
Happy is England! I could be content (1816)
Hither, hither, love (1817 or 1818)
How many bards gild the lapses of time (1816)
The Human Seasons
Hymn To Apollo
Hyperion (1818)
I am as brisk (1816)
I had a dove
I stood tip-toe upon a little hill (1816)
If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chain'd
Imitation of Spenser (1814) text
In Drear-Nighted December
Isabella or The Pot of Basil (1818) text
Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there (1816)
La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) text
Lamia (1819)
Lines Written on 29 May, the Anniversary of Charles’s Restoration, on Hearing the Bells Ringing (1814 or 1815)
Lines on Seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair
Lines on The Mermaid Tavern
Meg Merrilies
Modern Love (Keats)
O Blush Not So!
O come, dearest Emma! the rose is full blown (1815)
O grant that like to Peter I (1817?)
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell (1815 or 1816)
Ode (Keats)
Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) text
Ode on Indolence (1819)
Ode on Melancholy (1819) text
Ode to a Nightingale (1819) text
Ode to Apollo (1815)
Ode to Fanny
Ode to Psyche (1819)
Oh Chatterton! how very sad thy fate (1815)
Oh! how I love, on a fair summer's eve (1816)
Old Meg (1818)
On a Leander Which Miss Reynolds, My Kind Friend, Gave Me (1817)
On Death
On Fame text
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (1816) text
On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour (1816)

On Peace (1814) text
On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the Same Ladies (1815)
On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt (1816 or 1817)
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles (1817)
On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
On the Grasshopper and Cricket (1816)
On the Sea (1817) text
On The Story of Rimini (1817)
On The Sonnet
The Poet (a fragment)
A Prophecy - To George Keats in America
Robin Hood. To A Friend
Sharing Eve's Apple
Sleep and Poetry (1816)
A Song of Opposites
Specimen of an Induction to a Poem (1816)
Staffa
Stay, ruby breasted warbler, stay (1814)
Stanzas
Think not of it, sweet one, so (1817)
This Living Hand
This pleasant tale is like a little copse (1817)
To —
To a Cat
To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses (1816)
To a Lady seen for a few Moments at Vauxhall
To A Young Lady Who Sent Me A Laurel Crown (1816 or 1817)
To Ailsa Rock
To Autumn (1819) text
To Lord Byron (1814) text
To Charles Cowden Clarke (1816)
To Fanny
To G.A.W. (Georgiana Augusta Wylie) (1816)
To George Felton Mathew (1815)
To Georgiana Augusta Wylie
To Haydon
To Haydon with a Sonnet Written on Seeing the Elgin Marbles (1817)
To Homer
To Hope (1815)
To John Hamilton Reynolds
To Kosciusko (1816)
To Leigh Hunt, Esq. (1817)
To My Brother George (epistle) (1816)
To My Brother George (sonnet) (1816)
To My Brothers (1816)
To one who has been long in city pent (1816)
To Sleep
To Solitude
To Some Ladies (1815)
To the Ladies Who Saw Me Crown’d (1816 or 1817)
To the Nile
Two Sonnets on Fame
Unfelt, unheard, unseen (1817)
When I have fears that I may cease to be (1818) text
Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid?
Where's the Poet?
Why did I laugh tonight?
Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain (1815 or 1816)
Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition (1816)
Written on a Blank Space
Written on a Summer Evening
Written on the Day that Mr Leigh Hunt Left Prison (1815)
Written Upon the Top of Ben Nevis
You say you love; but with a voice (1817 or 1818)

Additional works

The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, ed. Horace Elisha Scudder, Boston: Riverside Press (1899) full text available through Google Books
The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats , ed. H. Buxton Forman. Oxford University Press (1907) full text available through Google Books
The Letters of John Keats, 1814-1821, Volumes 1 and 2, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, Harvard University Press (1958)
The Poems of John Keats, ed. Jack Stillinger, Harvard University Press (1978)
Complete Poems, ed. Jack Stillinger, Harvard University Press (1982)
John Keats: Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard, a Facsimile Edition, ed. Jack Stillinger, Harvard University Press (1990)
Selected Letters of John Keats, ed. Grant F. Scott, Harvard University Press (2002)

Notes

^ The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats edited by Horace Elisha Scudder, Boston: Riverside Press, 1899. p. 277
^ Church Street, Edmonton, London Retrieved 2 April 2008

References

Goslee, Nancy (1985), Uriel's Eye: Miltonic Stationing and Statuary in Blake, Keats and Shelley, University of Alabama Press, ISBN 0817302433
Jones, Michael (1984), "Twilight of the Gods: The Greeks in Schiller and Lukacs", Germanic Review, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 49–56.
Lachman, Lilach (1988), "History and Temporalization of Space: Keats's Hyperion Poems.", Proceedings of the XII Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, edited by Roger Bauer and Douwe Fokkema, Munich, Germany, pp. 159–164.
Richard Marggraf Turley (2004), Keats's Boyish Imagination, London: Routledge (2004), ISBN 9780415288828
Keats, John; Stillinger, Jack (1982), Complete Poems, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674154304
Wolfson, Susan J. (1986), The Questioning Presence., Ithaca, New York, ISBN 0801419093{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Biographies

Monckton Milnes, Richard, ed. (Lord Houghton) (1848). Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats. 2 vols. London: Edward Moxon.
Rossetti, William Michael (1887). The Life and Writings of John Keats. London: Walter Scott.
Colvin, Sidney (1917). John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends Critics and After-Fame. London: Macmillan.
Lowell, Amy (1925). John Keats. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Brown, Charles Armitage (1937). The Life of John Keats, ed. with an introduction and notes by Dorothy Hyde Bodurtha and Willard Bissell Pope. London: Oxford University Press.
Gittings, Robert (1954). John Keats: The Living Year. 21 September 1818 to 21 September 1819. London: Heinemann.
Parson, Donald (1954). Portraits of Keats. Cleveland: World Publishing Co.
Richardson, Joanna (1963). The Everlasting Spell. A Study of Keats and His Friends. London: Cape.
Ward, Aileen (1963). John Keats: The Making of a Poet. London: Secker & Warburg.
Bate, Walter Jackson (1964). John Keats. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Gittings, Robert (1964). The Keats Inheritance. London: Heinemann.
Gittings, Robert (1968). John Keats. London: Heinemann.
Hewlett, Dorothy (3rd rev. ed. 1970). A life of John Keats. London: Hutchinson.
Colvin, Sidney (1970). John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics, and After-Fame. New York: Octagon Books.
Richardson, Joanna (1980). Keats and His Circle. An Album of Portraits. London: Cassell.
Coote, Stephen (1995). John Keats. A Life. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Motion, Andrew (1997). Keats. London: Faber.
Walsh, John Evangelist (1999). Darkling I Listen: The Last Days and Death of John Keats. New York: St. Martin's Press
Kirkland, John (2008). Love Letters of Great Men, Vol. 1. CreateSpace Publishing.

External links

Sources

Works by or about John Keats at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
Works by John Keats at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
Complete Poetical Works
Complete Poetical Works, in an RSS feed
Electronic Concordance to the standard edition of Keats's poetry
Keats's Poetry and commentary at Oldpoetry.com

Portals

Scholarship

Misc

Keats's grave
Keats House
The Keats-Shelley House in Rome
"'Once More the Poet': Keats, Severn and the Grecian Lyre". Article by John Curtis Franklin about Severn's role in the design of Keats' tombstone, Protestant Cemetery, Rome
John Keats at the National Portrait Gallery (UK)
"Second only to Byron": an essay on "Barry Cornwall" and Keats from TLS, 3 September 2008.
Selected Works at Poetry Index

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[1] The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats edited by Horace Elisha Scudder, Boston: Riverside Press, 1899. p. 277

[2] Church Street, Edmonton, London Retrieved 2 April 2008

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