John Keats facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
John Keats
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Posthumous portrait of Keats by William Hilton, National Portrait Gallery, London (c. 1822)
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| Born | 31 October 1795 Moorgate, London, England |
| Died | 23 February 1821 (aged 25) Rome, Papal States |
| Cause of death | Tuberculosis |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Literary movement | Romanticism |
| Relatives | George Keats (brother) |
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis 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. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature – in particular "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Sleep and Poetry" and the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".
Contents
Early life and education, 1795–1810
John Keats was born in Moorgate, 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. He was the eldest of four surviving children; his younger siblings were George (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 ostler 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.
His parents wished to send their sons to Eton 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, 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 literature, including Tasso, 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.
In April 1804, when Keats was eight, his father died. 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.
In March 1810, when Keats was 14, his mother died of tuberculosis, 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 who was a neighbour and the doctor of the Jennings family.
Early career
In October 1815, having finished his five year apprenticeship with Hammond, Keats registered as a medical student at Guy's Hospital (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.
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 and Lord Byron, 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.
Literary career
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.
He became a friend and follower of the poet and editor James Henry Leigh Hunt. In May 1816, Leigh Hunt agreed to publish the sonnet "O Solitude" in his magazine The Examiner, a leading liberal magazine of the day. This was the first appearance of Keats's poetry in print.
Keats's active writing life lasted only about six years, from the spring of 1814 through 1819.
His short life meant that he wrote less than many other poets. His longest poems, Endymion and Hyperion, tell stories from ancient Greek mythology. Many of his shorter poems are among the best known in English literature, including the ballad "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and his sonnets and odes.
Fanny Brawne
Keats first met Frances (Fanny) Brawne between September and November 1818.
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's Inferno, 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.
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."
At that time Keates was already suffering from tuberculosis and was advised by his doctors to move to a warmer climate. In September 1820 he 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.
Death, 1821
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:
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 / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water / Feb 24th 1821
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."
Major works
- 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) ISBN: 0-674-47775-8
- 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 E. Scudder, ed., The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats (Boston: Riverside Press, 1899)
Images for kids
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Wentworth Place, now the Keats House museum (left), Ten Keats Grove (right), Hampstead Heath, London
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Keats's grave in Rome
See also
In Spanish: John Keats para niños
