JOHN KEATS BIOGRAPHY

john keats-charcoal

Portrait of John Keats by his friend Joseph Severn (1816) – a charcoal sketch

John Keats – one of the major poets of the English romantic movement.
He is famous by his songs, romances, epistolary poems, epics, hymns, ballads, odes, sonnets.
John Keats was born in Moorgate, near London, 31 of October 1795.
John was the oldest of Thomas and Frances Keats’ (born Jennings) four children: George, Thomas and Frances Mary (Fanny). His father first worked as a hostler and then was a stable keeper.
In the summer of 1803, Keats was sent to board at John Clarke’s school in Enfield Town – the small school, where Keats discovered an interest in classic literature and history. John Keats had lost both of his parents at an early age – his father died in April 1804 when John was eight, his mother died of tuberculosis in March 1810 when John was 14. Children were in the care of their grandmother, Alice Jennings, Edmontonat the Edmonton. In 1811, when he was sixteen, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary Dr. Hammond, in Edmonton, near Enfield. In October 1815, Keats entered Guy’s Hospital for further training, but soon he gave up his medical work to be a poet, not a surgeon. First appearance in print of Keats’s poetry was in May 1816 – his sonnet “O Solitude”, published in his magazine “The Examiner”.
His productive years between 1818 and 1820 yielded some of his masterworks, including “Lamia,” “The Eve of St. Agnes“, “Ode on a Grecian Urn“. In 1819, with his friend Charles Brown, Keats moved in the Hampstead, neighborhood of London. There, he met Fanny Brawne and by the end of the year, they were engaged.

John Keats Grave

John Keats’s Grave William Bell Scott (1811–1890)

In February 1820, Keats had a hemorrhage in his lungs – the first symptom of the tuberculosis.
Soon, after his last volume of poetry was published in July 1820, Keats travelled to Italy with his close friend, painter Joseph Severn.
John Keats dies of tuberculosis at the age of 25 in Rome on 23 February 1821.
He was buried in the Protestant cemetery. 

Permanent link to this article: http://keats-poems.com/about-john-keats/

John Keats Life by John Dennis

HEROES OF LITERATURE,   ENGLISH POETS. A BOOK FOR YOUNG READERS.   BY  JOHN DENNIS, AUTHOR OF “STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE,” AND EDITOR OF “ENGLISH SONNETS : A SELECTION,” ETC.   PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.   LONDON: SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, …

John Keats, his life and poetry, his friends critics and after-fame by Sidney Colvin

  PREFACE CHAPTER I  CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X  CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV  CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI   CHAPTER XVII  APPENDIX

PICTURES OF JOHN KEATS