John Keats-Life & Works-Short Biographies of Poets, Writers, Dramatists and Novelists

 John Keats-Life & Works

John Keats was one of the five great Romantic Poets of the English language. It is very unfortunate that he was the last to be born and the first to die out of the five great romantic poets of England. His other contemporary great poets were: William Wordsworth, S.T Coleridge, P. B. Shelley, and Lord Byron.

John Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795. He died just in the prime of his life and could hardly complete the 25^th year of his age. He devoted his short life in the field of writing great poetry that is marked by perfection, vivid imagery and great sensuous appeal.

His Early Years

He was one among the four children of his parents, Thomas and Frances. He lost his father when he was just eight years. It had a very profound (deep) effect on his mind. His father was a stable keeper. One day he fell down from a horse and thus died of a deep injury in his skull.

In a way, John Keats’ short life was full of shocks and sufferings. His father’s death left the family in a financial crunch. It was difficult for his mother to manage the home.

Very soon she also left the children in difficulty and remarried to a person. She left the children under the care of her mother. When she finally returned to her family, she was suffering from tuberculosis and she died in early 1810.

His solitary life made him a voracious reader of English Literature. John Clarke, the headmaster of his school encouraged him to take a keen interest in English Literature. So he found solace and comfort in the world of art and literature.

Towards the end of the year 1810, Keats left school for his studies. He studied medicines at a London hospital and became a licensed practitioner.

Keats’ Poetry

But Keats's love for poetry was very much dominating in him. He met a publisher Leigh Hunt with the help of his friend, Cowden Clark. Thus Hunt became his first publisher. It is Leigh Hunt, who introduced John Keats to two other great romantic poets of English, William Wordsworth and P. B. Shelley.

In 1817, Keats’ first volume of poetry ‘Poems by John Keats’ was published. The next year, his long poem of four thousand lines, titled “Endymion”, was published. That poem was based on the Greek myth.

But, John Keats had to face severe criticism for his published works and it had a deep impact on his poetic career.

But he did not lose heart. He continued thinking and rethinking the subject of poetry in relation to human experiences. At that time, Keats’ mind was also working on the famous doctrine of ‘negative capability.

His first Shakespearean sonnet “When I have fears that I may cease to be” was published in January 1818. After two months, “Isabella” was published.

It was in early 1819, Keats wrote great poems like ‘Lamia”, “The Eve Of St. Agnes”, and also his great odes like “On Indolence”, “On a Grecian Urn”, “To Psyche”, “To a Nightingale”, “On Melancholy” and “To Autumn”. He also wrote two versions of Hyperion.

During the year 1819, Keats was in utter illness. In the beginning of 1820, the symptoms of Tuberculosis were clear, and in the early December of 1820, Keats died in Rome.