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 25th 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.
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.
