John Keats Biography
· John Keats was one
of the greatest of English Romantic poets. Of all the greatest poets of the
early 19th century, John Keats was the last born and the first to
die.
· John Keats was
born at Moonfields, London in the year 1795. His parents marked his birthday on
29 October and in baptism record his birthday is marked on 31 October. It is
said that Keats was born in his maternal grandfather’s stable.
· John Keats was the
eldest of four surviving children; his younger siblings were George Keats
(1797-1841), Tom Keats (1799-1818) and Frances Mary Keats ‘Fanny’
(1803-1889), who later married the Spanish author Valentin Llanos Gutierrez.
Another sibling of Keats died in infancy.
· His father’s name
was Thomas Keats. He worked in the stable of his father-in-law, John Jennings.
· In 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. His
mother, Frances Jennings remarried two month 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.
· Her mother died of
Tuberculosis when Keats was only 14.
· At first, John
Keats and his brothers George Keats and Thomas Keats were educated at a less
expensive private school run by Rev. John Clarke (Clark’s School) at Enfield
near London where he remained for six years, without showing any signs of
special interest in intellectual things.
· When he was at
Clarke’s school he developed an interest in classics and history. When he was
at Clarke’s school, he met Charles Cowden Clarke, the headmaster’s son. Charles
was his mentor and friend. He introduced John Keats to Tasso, Spenser, Chapman’s
translation and Renaissance. However, at age 13 he began focusing his energy on
reading and study and won his first academic prize in midsummer 1809.
· He studied
medicine in a hospital in London and apprenticed with an apothecary surgeon,
Thomas Hammod. He became a licensed apothecary in 1816, he never practiced
medicin.
· When nineteen,
Keats returned, in 1815, from Edmonton to London, for he quarreled with Dr.
Hammond and left him a year before the completion of his apprenticeship. In
London, he continued his training as a student of St. Thomas’s Hospital and Guy’s.
though an industrious and able medical student, he gradually realized that
poetry was his true vacation. Soon , even against his guardian’s opposition,
Keats decided to give up his medical profession in favour of poetic vacation.
· Cowden Clarke
introduced Keats to Leigh Hunt, a close friend of Byron and Shelly. His poems ‘I
Stood Tiptoe’ and ‘Sleep and Poetry’ were influenced by Leigh Hunt.
· His first poem
‘Lines in Imitation of Spenser’ was published in 1814 when he was only 19.
· Further, his
financial condition was not good, so he was suffering from depression.
According to his brother George- John was feared that he should never be a
poet, and if he was failed he would destroy himself.
· In 1818, his brother
Tom Keats died, after that, he moved to Hampstead Heath. He lived in the house
of Charles Brown. There lived a lady named Mrs. Brawne. Her 16 years old
daughter Fannt and John Keats fell in love with each other.
· In 1820, John
Keats began to feel ill of consumption. Due to his consumption, he was unable
to complete his future goals. He went Italy to his treatment. He returned from
there and went to Rome. His tuberculosis was in its last stage. So he died on
February 23, 1821. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.
· Works published in
1817:- Imitation of Spenser, On Death, On Hope, I stood Tiptoe, On first
Chapman’s Homer, Sleep and Poetry
· In 1818- Endymion (in
four books) ( A thing of beauty is a joy forever; first line of this poem)
· In 1819-20:- The Eve
of St. Agnes, Isabella, Hyperion, Ode on a Grecian Urn, La Belle Dame Sans
Merci, To Autumn, On Melancholy, Ode to Psyche, Lamia, Ode to a Nightingale, On
Indolence, On Melancholy.
· Incomplete works:
The eve of St. Mark, The Fall of Hyperion, Otho: A poetic drama.
· His odes ‘On
Idolence’, ‘On a Grecian Urn’, ‘To Psyche’, ‘To a Nightingale’, ‘On Melancholy
and ‘Ode to Autumn’ made him a great romantic poet of English Literature.
