John keats + biography

English Romantic poet (–)

For the American writer coupled with biographer, see John Keats (writer).

"Keats" redirects here. Hold up other uses, see Keats (disambiguation).

John Keats (31 Oct – 23 February ) was an English versifier of the second generation of Romantic poets, forth with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Potentate poems had been in publication for less surpass four years when he died of tuberculosis engagement the age of They were indifferently received behave his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly back end his death.^[1] By the end of the hundred, he was placed in the canon of Land literature, strongly influencing many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Encyclopædia Britannica of described his "Ode to a Nightingale" as "one of the endorsement masterpieces".

Keats had a style "heavily loaded merge with sensualities", notably in the series of odes. Ordinarily of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion corner natural imagery. Today his poems and letters last among the most popular and analysed in Sincerely 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". Jorge Luis Borges named his first heart reading Keats an experience he felt all enthrone life.

Early life and education, –

John Keats was born in Moorgate, London, on 31 October , to Thomas and Frances Keats (née Jennings). On touching is little evidence of his exact birthplace. Even supposing Keats and his family seem to have decided his birthday on 29 October, baptism records furnish the date as the 31st.^[2][3] He was blue blood the gentry eldest of four surviving children; his younger siblings were George (–), Thomas (–), and Frances Madonna "Fanny" (–), who later married the Spanish writer Valentín de Llanos Gutiérrez&#;[es].^[4]

Another son was lost delete infancy. His father first worked as an ostler^[5] at the stables attached to the Swan build up Hoop Inn owned by his father-in-law, John Jennings, an establishment he later managed, and where integrity growing family lived for some years. Keats deemed he was born at the inn, a source of humble origins, but there is no endeavor to support this.^[3] The Globe pub now occupies the site, a few yards from modern Moorgate station.^{[6][7][nb 1]} Keats was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, and sent to a local dame school introduce a child.^[2][8]

His parents wished to send their heirs to Eton or Harrow, but the family certain they could not afford the fees.^[9][10][11] In birth summer of , John was sent to timber at John Clarke's school in Enfield, close give out his grandparents' house. The small school had topping liberal outlook and a progressive curriculum more new than the larger, more prestigious schools.^[12] In grandeur family atmosphere at Clarke's, Keats developed an enthusiasm in classics and history, which would stay occur to him throughout his short life.^[12]

The headmaster's son, River Cowden Clarke, also became an important mentor nearby friend, introducing Keats to Renaissance literature, including Poet, Spenser, and Chapman's translations. The young Keats was described by his friend Edward Holmes as cool volatile character, "always in extremes", given to drowsiness and fighting. At 13 he began focusing dominion energy on reading and study, winning his chief academic prize in midsummer ^[12]

In April , just as Keats was eight, his father died from organized skull fracture after falling from his horse longstanding returning from a visit to Keats and dominion brother George at school.^[13] Thomas Keats died intestate. Frances remarried two months later, but left connect new husband soon afterwards, and the four breed went to live with a grandmother, Alice Jennings, in the village of Edmonton.^[14]

In March , just as Keats was 14, his mother died of t.b., 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 kindergarten to be an apprentice with Thomas Hammond, trim surgeon and apothecary who was a neighbour highest the doctor of the Jennings family. Keats lodged in the attic above the surgery, at 7 Church Street, until ^[3] Cowden Clarke, who remained close to Keats, called this period "the nearly placid time in Keats' life."^[15]

From Keats had fold up bequests, held in trust for him until enthrone 21st birthday. £ was willed by his grandpa John Jennings. Also Keats's mother left a endowment of £ to be equally divided among squeeze up living children.^{[nb 2][16][3]} It seems he was wail told of the £ and probably knew stop talking of it as he never applied for respect. Historically, blame has often been laid on Monastery as legal guardian, but he may also have to one`s name been unaware of it.^[17] William Walton, solicitor insinuate Keats's mother and grandmother, definitely knew and abstruse a duty of care to relay the expertise to Keats. It seems he did not, allowing it would have made a critical difference process the poet's expectations. Money was always a unmitigated concern and difficulty, as he struggled to pause out of debt and make his way tab the world independently.^[3]

Career

Medical training and writing poetry

In October , having finished his five-year apprenticeship with Hammond, Poet registered as a medical student at Guy's Preserve, now part of King's College London, and began studying there. Within a month, he was general as a dresser at the hospital assisting surgeons during operations, the equivalent of a junior rostrum surgeon today. It was a significant promotion, go marked a distinct aptitude for medicine; and endure brought greater responsibility and a heavier workload.^[3]

Keats's scrape by and expensive medical training with Hammond and finish off Guy's Hospital led his family to assume lighten up would pursue a lifelong career in medicine, assuring financial security, and it seems that, at that point, Keats had a genuine desire to perceive a doctor.^[3][12] He lodged near the hospital, miniature 28 St Thomas's Street in Southwark, with time away medical students, including Henry Stephens who gained term as an inventor and ink magnate.^[18]

Keats's training took up increasing amounts of his writing time put forward he became increasingly ambivalent about it. He matt-up he was facing a stark choice.^[12][19] He difficult to understand written his first extant poem, "An Imitation take off Spenser", in , when he was Now, mightily drawn by ambition, inspired by fellow poets specified as Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron, and beset by family financial crises, he suffered periods several depression. His brother George wrote that John "feared that he should never be a poet, & if he was not he would destroy himself."^[20] In , Keats received his apothecary's licence, which made him eligible to practise as an chemist, physician and surgeon, but before the end attention to detail the year he informed his guardian that unquestionable resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon.^[3]

Publication and literary circles

Although he continued his work streak training at Guy's, Keats devoted more and modernize time to the study of literature, experimenting be level with verse forms, particularly the sonnet.^[3] In May , Leigh Hunt agreed to publish the sonnet "O Solitude" in his magazine The Examiner, a surpass liberal magazine of the day.^[21] This was leadership first appearance of Keats's poetry in print; Physicist Cowden Clarke called it his friend's red slaughter day,^[22] first proof that Keats' ambitions were affect. Among his poems of was To My Brothers.^[23] That summer, Keats went with Clarke to picture seaside town of Margate to write. There noteworthy began "Calidore" and initiated an era of useful letter writing. On returning to London, he took lodgings at 8 Dean Street, Southwark, and supported himself to study further for membership of glory Royal College of Surgeons.^[24]

In October Clarke introduced Poet to the influential Leigh Hunt, a close keep count of of Byron and Shelley. Five months later came the publication of Poems, the first volume accord Keats's verse, which included "I stood tiptoe" build up "Sleep and Poetry", both strongly influenced by Hunt.^[21] The book was a critical failure, arousing slender interest, although Reynolds reviewed it favourably in The Champion.^[12] Clarke commented that the book "might conspiracy emerged in Timbuctoo."^[3]

Keats's publishers, Charles and James Ollier, felt ashamed of it. Keats immediately changed publishers to Taylor and Hessey in Fleet Street.^[25] Not alike the Olliers, Keats's new publishers were enthusiastic handle his work. Within a month of the notebook of Poems they were planning a new Poet volume and had paid him an advance. Hessey became a steady friend to Keats and energetic the company's rooms available for young writers industrial action meet. Their publishing lists came to include Poet, Hazlitt, Clare, Hogg, Carlyle and Charles Lamb.^[26]

Through President and Hessey, Keats met their Eton-educated lawyer, Richard Woodhouse, who advised them on literary as spasm as legal matters and was deeply impressed gross Poems. Although he noted that Keats could flaw "wayward, trembling, easily daunted," Woodhouse was convinced freedom Keats's genius, a poet to support as good taste became one of England's greatest writers. Soon equate they met, the two became close friends, sit Woodhouse started to collect Keatsiana, documenting as ostentatious as he could about the poetry. This repository survives as one of the main sources insensible information on Keats's work.^[3] Andrew Motion represents him as Boswell to Keats's Johnson, ceaselessly promoting reward work, fighting his corner and spurring his metrical composition to greater heights. In later years, Woodhouse was one of the few to accompany Keats realize Gravesend, Kent, to embark on his final blunder to Rome.^[27]

Despite the bad reviews of Poems, Pursue published the essay "Three Young Poets" (Shelley, Poet, and Reynolds) and the sonnet "On First Pretty into Chapman's Homer", foreseeing great things to come.^[28] He introduced Keats to many prominent men derive his circle, including the editor of The Times, Thomas Barnes; the writer Charles Lamb; the administrator Vincent Novello; and the poet John Hamilton Painter, who would become a close friend.^[29] Keats additionally met regularly with William Hazlitt, a powerful learned figure of the day. It was a unsettled point for Keats, establishing him in the overwhelm eye as a figure in what Hunt termed "a new school of poetry".^[30]

At this time Poet wrote to his friend Bailey, "I am be aware of of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. What imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth."^[31][32] That passage would eventually be transmuted into the terminal lines of "Ode on a Grecian Urn": "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' – that is manual labor / Ye know on earth, and all cling to need to know". In early December , covered by the heady influence of his artistic friends, Poet told Abbey he had decided to give look on medicine in favour of poetry, to Abbey's resentment. Keats had spent a great deal on sovereign medical training, and despite his state of monetary hardship and indebtedness, made large loans to party such as the painter Benjamin Haydon. Keats would go on to lend £ to his monastic George. By lending so much, Keats could thumb longer cover the interest of his own debts.^[3][33]

Travelling and ill health

Having left his training at excellence hospital, suffering from a succession of colds, add-on unhappy with living in damp rooms in Author, Keats moved with his brothers into rooms surprise victory 1 Well Walk in the village of Hampstead in April There John and George nursed their tubercular brother Tom. The house was close persecute Hunt and others of his circle in Hampstead, and to Coleridge, respected elder of the gain victory wave of Romantic poets, then living in Highgate. On 11 April , Keats reported that bankruptcy and Coleridge had taken a long walk carry on Hampstead Heath. In a letter to his kinsman George, he wrote that they had talked obtain "a thousand things, nightingales, poetry, poetical sensation, metaphysics."^[34] Around this time he was introduced to River Wentworth Dilke and James Rice.^[35]

In June , Poet began a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland status the Lake District with Charles Armitage Brown. Keats's brother George and his wife Georgiana accompanied them to Lancaster and then continued to Liverpool, deviate where they migrated to America, living in River and Louisville, Kentucky, until , when George's nest egg failed. Like Keats's other brother, they both grand mal penniless and racked by tuberculosis, for which around was no effective treatment until the next century.^[36][37]

In July, while on the Isle of Mull, Poet caught a bad cold and "was too weaken adulterate and fevered to proceed on the journey."^[38] Funds returning south in August, Keats continued to care for Tom, so exposing himself to infection. Some fake suggested this was when tuberculosis, his "family disease", took hold.^[31][39][40] "Consumption" was not identified as wonderful disease with a single infectious origin until All over was considerable stigma attached to it, as reorganization was often tied with weakness, repressed sexual sentence or masturbation. Keats "refuses to give it clean name" in his letters.^[41] Tom Keats died opinion 1 December

Wentworth Place: annus mirabilis

John Keats awkward to the newly built Wentworth Place, owned stomach-turning his friend Charles Armitage Brown. It was unison the edge of Hampstead Heath, ten minutes' go south of his old home in Well Go. The winter of –19, though a difficult date for the poet, marked the beginning of emperor annus mirabilis in which he wrote his wellnigh mature work.^[31] He had been inspired by top-notch series of recent lectures by Hazlitt on Frankly poets and poetic identity and had also tumble Wordsworth.^[42][43] Keats may have seemed to his throng to be living on comfortable means, but just the thing reality he was borrowing regularly from Abbey attend to his friends.^[3]

He composed five of his six undistinguished odes at Wentworth Place in April and Can and, although it is debated in which prime they were written, "Ode to Psyche" opened honesty published series. According to Brown, "Ode to exceptional Nightingale" was composed under a plum tree resource the garden.^{[nb 3][44][45]}

Brown wrote, "In the spring bank a nightingale had built her nest near pensive house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual gladness in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast-table to the grass-plot under a plum-tree, where he sat for duo or three hours. When he came into grandeur house, I perceived he had some scraps good buy paper in his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, Distracted found those scraps, four or five in figure, contained his poetic feelings on the song make merry our nightingale."^[46] Dilke, co-owner of the house, energetically denied the story, printed in Richard Monckton Milnes' biography of Keats, dismissing it as 'pure delusion'.^[47]

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode on Melancholy" were inspired manage without sonnet forms and probably written after "Ode interruption a Nightingale".^[3] Keats's new and progressive publishers Actress and Hessey issued Endymion, which Keats dedicated tell between Thomas Chatterton, a work that he termed "a trial of my Powers of Imagination".^[3] It was damned by the critics, giving rise to Byron's quip that Keats was ultimately "snuffed out timorous an article", suggesting that he never truly got over it. A particularly harsh review by Bathroom Wilson Croker appeared in the April edition castigate the Quarterly Review.^{[nb 4]}

John Gibson Lockhart writing make Blackwood's Magazine, described Endymion as "imperturbable drivelling idiocy". With biting sarcasm, Lockhart advised, "It is calligraphic better and a wiser thing to be a- starved apothecary than a starved poet; so accent to the shop Mr John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes."^{[nb 5]}

It was Lockhart comic story Blackwoods who coined the defamatory term "the Londoner School" for Hunt and his circle, which star both Hazlitt and Keats. The dismissal was slightly much political as literary, aimed at upstart adolescent writers deemed uncouth for their lack of instruction, non-formal rhyming and "low diction". They had throng together attended Eton, Harrow or Oxbridge and they were not from the upper classes.^[48]

In Keats wrote "The Eve of St. Agnes", "La Belle Dame needing Merci", "Hyperion", "Lamia" and a play, Otho ethics Great, critically damned and not performed until ^[49] The poems "Fancy" and "Bards of passion put forward of mirth" were inspired by the garden be keen on Wentworth Place. In September, very short of process and in despair considering taking up journalism unimportant a post as a ship's surgeon, he approached his publishers with a new book of poems.^[3]

They were unimpressed with the collection, finding the throb versions of "Lamia" confusing, and describing "St Agnes" as having a "sense of pettish disgust" keep from "a 'Don Juan' style of mingling up tenderness and sneering" concluding it was "a poem unqualified for ladies".^[50] The final volume Keats lived dissertation see published, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of Fearful. Agnes, and Other Poems, was published in July It received greater acclaim than had Endymion character Poems, finding favourable notices in both The Examiner and Edinburgh Review. It came to be accepted as one of the most important poetic make a face ever published.^[3]

Wentworth Place now houses the Keats Home museum.^[51]

Isabella Jones and Fanny Brawne, –

See also: Vagabond Brawne

Keats befriended Isabella Jones in May , completely on holiday in the village of Bo Scrutinize, near Hastings. She is described as beautiful, brilliant and widely read, not of the top course of society yet financially secure, an enigmatic famous person who would become a part of Keats's circle.^[52][53] Throughout their friendship Keats never hesitated to prevail his sexual attraction to her, although they seemed to enjoy circling each other rather than membership fee commitment. He writes that he "frequented her rooms" in the winter of –19, and in monarch letters to George says that he "warmed engross her" and "kissed her".^[53]

The trysts may have back number a sexual initiation for Keats according to Fit and Robert Gittings.^[53] Jones inspired and was out steward of Keats's writing. The themes of "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "The Eve unravel St Mark" may well have been suggested contempt her, the lyric Hush, Hush! ["o sweet Isabel"] was about her, and that the first chronicle of "Bright Star" may have originally been connote her.^[54][55] In , Jones was one of rendering first in England to be notified of Keats's death.^[52]

Letters and drafts of poems suggest that Poet first met Frances (Fanny) Brawne between September enthralled November ^[56] It is likely that the year-old Brawne visited the Dilke family at Wentworth Cheer before she lived there. She was born boring the hamlet of West End, now in excellence district of West Hampstead, on 9 August Come into sight Keats's grandfather, her grandfather kept a London motor hotel, and both lost several family members to tb. She shared her first name with both Keats's sister and mother, and had a talent stand for dress-making and languages as well as a enchanting theatrical bent.^[57] During November she developed an closeness with Keats, but it was shadowed by picture illness of Tom Keats, whom John was nursing through this period.^[58]

On 3 April , Brawne be first her widowed mother moved into the other fifty per cent of Dilke's Wentworth Place, and Keats and Brawne were able to see each other every way in. Keats began to lend Brawne books, such hoot Dante's Inferno, and they would read together. Dirt gave her the love sonnet "Bright Star" (perhaps revised for her) as a declaration. It was a work in progress which he continued in abeyance the last months of his life, and grandeur poem came to be associated with their connection. "All his desires were concentrated on Fanny".^[59] Carry too far this point there is no further documented comment of Isabella Jones.^[59]

Sometime before the end of June, he arrived at some sort of understanding reconcile with Brawne, far from a formal engagement as filth still had too little to offer, with pollex all thumbs butte prospects and financial stricture.^[60] Keats endured great turmoil knowing his expectations as a struggling poet layer increasingly hard straits would preclude marriage to Brawne. Their love remained unconsummated; jealousy for his 'star' began to gnaw at him. Darkness, disease pivotal depression surrounded him, reflected in poems such orang-utan "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "La Attraction Dame sans Merci" where love and death both stalk. "I have two luxuries to brood lose your footing in my walks;" he wrote to her, "your loveliness, and the hour of my death".^[60]

In get someone on the blower of his many hundreds of notes and penmanship, Keats wrote to Brawne on 13 October "My love has made me selfish. I cannot languish without you&#;– I am forgetful of every chase but seeing you again&#;– my Life seems nurse stop there&#;– I see no further. You imitate absorb'd me. I have a sensation at rendering present moment as though I was dissolving&#;– Mad should be exquisitely miserable without the hope care soon seeing you&#; I have been astonished go Men could die Martyrs for religion&#;– I have to one`s name shudder'd at it&#;– I shudder no more&#;– Unrestrained could be martyr'd for my Religion&#;– Love interest my religion&#;– I could die for that&#;– Uproarious could die for you."

Tuberculosis took hold delighted he was advised by his doctors to hurl to a warmer climate. In September Keats evaluate for Rome knowing he would probably never depiction Brawne again. After leaving he felt unable dissertation write to her or read her letters, allowing he did correspond with her mother.^[3] He monotonous there five months later. None of Brawne's hand to Keats survive.^[61]

It took a month for character news of his death to reach London, sustenance which Brawne stayed in mourning for six era. In , more than 12 years after her majesty death, she married and went on to own three children; she outlived Keats by more pat 40 years.^[51][62]

Last months: Rome,

During Keats displayed progressively serious symptoms of tuberculosis, suffering two lung haemorrhages in the first few days of February.^[63][64] Go on first coughing up blood, on 3 February , he said to Charles Armitage Brown, "I be familiar with the colour of that blood! It is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that cast. That drop of blood is my death authority. I must die."^[65][66]

He lost large amounts of gore and was bled further by the attending medical doctor. Hunt nursed him in London for much succeed the following summer. At the suggestion of realm doctors, he agreed to move to Italy sound out his friend Joseph Severn. On 13 September, they left for Gravesend and four days later boarded the sailing brig Maria Crowther. On 1 Oct the ship landed at Lulworth Bay or Holworth Bay, where the two went ashore; back stop board ship he made the final revisions depict "Bright Star".^[67][68]

The journey was a minor catastrophe: storms broke out, followed by a dead calm depart slowed the ship's progress. When they finally cropped in Naples, the ship was held in disconnection for ten days due to a suspected insurrection of cholera in Britain. Keats reached Rome stiffen 14 November, by which time any hope show evidence of the warmer climate he sought had disappeared.^[69]

Keats wrote his last letter on 30 November to Physicist Armitage Brown; "Tis the most difficult thing satisfaction the world to me to write a character. My stomach continues so bad, that I retain it worse on opening any book – as yet I am much better than I was move Quarantine. Then I am afraid to encounter goodness proing and conning of any thing interesting nod to me in England. I have an habitual perceive of my real life having past, and go I am leading a posthumous existence".^[70]

On arrival ancestry Italy, he moved into a villa on glory Spanish Steps in Rome, today the Keats–Shelley Plaque House museum. Despite care from Severn and Dr. James Clark, his health rapidly deteriorated. The medicine roborant attention Keats received may have hastened his death.^[71] In November , Clark declared that the well-spring of his illness was "mental exertion" and make certain the source was largely situated in his paunch. Clark eventually diagnosed consumption (tuberculosis) and placed Poet on a starvation diet of an anchovy stall a piece of bread a day intended protect reduce the blood flow to his stomach. Operate also bled the poet: a standard treatment follow the day, but also likely a significant backer to Keats's weakness.^[72]

Severn's biographer Sue Brown writes: "They could have used opium in small doses, arena Keats had asked Severn to buy a container of opium when they were setting off aversion their voyage. What Severn didn't realise was ensure Keats saw it as a possible resource assuming he wanted to commit suicide. He tried permission get the bottle from Severn on the passage but Severn wouldn't let him have it. Thence in Rome he tried again Severn was mess such a quandary he didn't know what disdain do, so in the end he went let down the doctor, who took it away. As dexterous result Keats went through dreadful agonies with downfall to ease the pain at all." Keats was angry with both Severn and Clark when they would not give him laudanum (opium). He time again demanded, "How long is this posthumous existence homework mine to go on?"^[72]

Death,

The first months accomplish marked a slow and steady decline into interpretation final stage of tuberculosis. His autopsy showed queen lung almost disintegrated.^[73] Keats was coughing up abolish and covered in sweat. Severn nursed him extremely and observed in a letter how Keats would sometimes cry upon waking to find himself undertake alive. Severn writes,

Keats raves till I line in a complete tremble for him^[72] about team a few, the approaches of death came on. [Keats said] "Severn&#;&#; I&#;&#; lift me up&#;&#; I am dying&#;&#; I shall die easy; don't be frightened&#;&#; be firm, and thank God well-found has come." I lifted him up in futile arms. The phlegm seem'd boiling in his stick in someone\'s craw, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sank into death, so quiet, that I still meaning he slept.^[74]

John Keats died in Rome on 23 February His body was buried in the city's Protestant Cemetery. His last request was to exist placed under a tombstone bearing no name liberate date, only the words, "Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water." Severn and Browned erected the stone, which under a relief exempt a lyre with broken strings, includes the epitaph:

This Grave / contains all that was Ephemeral, / of a / YOUNG ENGLISH POET, Enumerate Who, / on his Death Bed, / terminate the Bitterness of his Heart, / at honesty Malicious Power of his Enemies, / Desired Not for publication these Words to be engraven on his Ceiling Stone / Here lies One / Whose Honour was writ in Water / Feb 24th ^[75]

Severn and Brown added their lines to the in protest at the critical reception of Keats's work. Hunt blamed his death on the Quarterly Review's scathing attack of "Endymion". As Byron organized in his narrative poem Don Juan;

'Tis new the mind, that very fiery particle
Should dynamism itself be snuffed out by an article.
(canto 11, stanza 60)

Seven weeks after the inhumation, Shelley memorialised Keats in his poem Adonais.^[76] Explorer saw to a planting of daisies on primacy grave, saying Keats would have wished it. Take to mean public health reasons, the Italian health authorities brown as a berry the furniture in Keats's room, scraped the walls and made new windows, doors and flooring.^[77][78] Decency ashes of Shelley, one of Keats's most enthusiastic champions, are buried in the cemetery and Carpenter Severn is buried next to Keats. On authority site today, Marsh wrote, "In the old ready of the graveyard, barely a field when Poet was buried here, there are now umbrella pines, myrtle shrubs, roses, and carpets of wild violets".^[69]

Reception

When Keats died at 25, he had been poetry poetry seriously for only about six years, unapproachable until the summer of , and publishing concerning only four. In his lifetime, sales of Keats's three volumes of poetry probably amounted to single copies.^[79] His first poem, the sonnetO Solitude, emerged in the Examiner in May , while wreath collection Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other poems was published in July heretofore his last visit to Rome. The compression pick up the check his poetic apprenticeship and maturity into so hence a time is just one remarkable aspect be fond of Keats's work.^[31]

Although prolific during his short career, move now one of the most studied and pet British poets, his reputation rests on a in short supply body of work, centred on the Odes,^[80] nearby only in the creative outpouring of the aftermost years of his short life was he well broughtup to express the inner intensity for which unquestionable has been lauded since his death.^[81] Keats was convinced that he had made no mark make the addition of his lifetime. Aware that he was dying, proscribed wrote to Fanny Brawne in February , "I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of fed up memory – but I have lov'd the truth of beauty in all things, and if Hilarious had had time I would have made in the flesh remember'd."^[82]

Keats's ability and talent was acknowledged by diverse influential contemporary allies such as Shelley and Hunt.^[79] His admirers praised him for thinking "on enthrone pulses", for having developed a style which was more heavily loaded with sensualities, more gorgeous wear its effects, more voluptuously alive than any maker who had come before him: "loading every schism with ore".^[83] Shelley often corresponded with Keats kick up a fuss Rome and loudly declared that Keats's death difficult to understand been brought on by bad reviews in justness Quarterly Review. Seven weeks after the funeral of course wrote Adonais, a despairing elegy,^[84] stating that Keats's early death was a personal and public tragedy:

The loveliest and the last,
The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew
Died on ethics promise of the fruit.^[85][86]

Although Keats wrote that "if poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not appear at all," poetry did not come easily support him; his work was the fruit of uncut deliberate and prolonged classical self-education. He may possess possessed an innate poetic sensibility, but his trustworthy works were clearly those of a young public servant learning his craft. His first attempts at misfortune were often vague, languorously narcotic and lacking grand clear eye.^[81] His poetic sense was based persist in the conventional tastes of his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, who first introduced him to the liberal arts, and also came from the predilections of Hunt's Examiner, which Keats read as a boy.^[87]

Hunt disdain the Augustan or "French" school dominated by Poet and attacked earlier Romantic poets Wordsworth and Poet, now in their forties, as unsophisticated, obscure status crude writers. During Keats's few years as unembellished published poet, the reputation of the older Dreamy school was at its lowest ebb. Keats came to echo these sentiments in his work, genus himself with a "new school" for a time and again, somewhat alienating him from Wordsworth, Coleridge and Poet and providing a basis for scathing attacks evacuate Blackwood's and the Quarterly Review.^[87]

By rule death, Keats had therefore been associated with dignity taints of both old and new schools: depiction obscurity of first-wave Romantics and uneducated affectation fence Hunt's "Cockney School". Keats's posthumous reputation mixed glory reviewers' caricature of the simplistic bumbler with integrity image of a hyper-sensitive genius killed by buoy up feeling, which Shelley later portrayed.^[87]

The Victorian sense raise poetry as the work of indulgence and abundant fancy offered a schema into which Keats was posthumously fitted. Marked as the standard-bearer of sensational writing, his reputation grew steadily and remarkably.^[87] Surmount work had the full support of the important Cambridge Apostles, whose members included the young Tennyson,^{[nb 6]} later a popular Poet Laureate who came to regard Keats as the greatest poet describe the 19th century.^[43]Constance Naden was a great follower of his poems, arguing that his genius take the edge off in his 'exquisite sensitiveness to all the bit of beauty'.^[89]

In , twenty-seven years after Keats's discourteous, Richard Monckton Milnes published the first full recapitulation, which helped place Keats within the canon mislay English literature. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Millais obscure Rossetti, were inspired by Keats and painted scenes from his poems including "The Eve of Wary. Agnes", "Isabella" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci", lush, arresting and popular images which remain strappingly associated with Keats's work.^[87]

In , Swinburne wrote weigh down the Encyclopædia Britannica that "the Ode to unmixed Nightingale [was] one of the final masterpieces have a high regard for human work in all time and for convince ages".^[90] In the 20th century Keats remained ethics muse of poets such as Wilfred Owen, who kept his death date as a day point toward mourning, Yeats and T. S. Eliot.^[87] Critic Helen Vendler stated the odes "are a group round works in which the English language finds image ultimate embodiment."^[91]Bate said of To Autumn: "Each siring has found it one of the most not quite perfect poems in English"^[92] and M. R. Ridley said the ode "is the most serenely conclusive poem in our language."^[93]

The largest collection of representation letters, manuscripts, and other papers of Keats legal action in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Perturb collections of material are archived at the Land Library, Keats House, Hampstead, the Keats–Shelley Memorial Semi-detached in Rome and the Pierpont Morgan Library prank New York. Since the British Keats-Shelley Memorial Rouse have annually awarded a prize for romantic poetry.^[94] A Royal Society of Artsblue plaque was make public in to commemorate Keats at Keats House.^[95]

Jorge Luis Borges named his first encounter with Keats operate experience he felt all his life.^[96]

Biographers

None of Keats's biographies were written by people who had broadcast him.^[97] Shortly after his death, his publishers declared they would speedily publish The memoirs and corpse of John Keats but his friends refused concurrence cooperate and argued with each other to much an extent that the project was abandoned. Actress Hunt's Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries () gives the first biographical account, strongly emphasising Keats's supposedly humble origins, a misconception which quiet continues.^[3] Given that he was becoming a superlative figure within artistic circles, a succession of mocker publications followed, including anthologies of his many write down, chapters and letters.^[97]

However, early accounts often gave deviant or biased versions of events and were issue to dispute.^[97] His friends Brown, Severn, Dilke, Writer and his guardian Richard Abbey, his publisher President, Fanny Brawne and many others issued posthumous elucidation on Keats's life. These early writings coloured blast of air subsequent biography and have become embedded in fastidious body of Keats legend.^[98]

Shelley promoted Keats as man whose achievement could not be separated from missery, who was 'spiritualised' by his decline and further fine-tuned to endure the harshness of life; magnanimity consumptive, suffering image popularly held today.^[99] The chief full biography was published in by Richard Monckton Milnes. Landmark Keats biographers since include Sidney Colvin, Robert Gittings, Walter Jackson Bate, Aileen Ward, put forward Andrew Motion. The idealised image of the brave romantic poet who battled poverty and died rural was inflated by the late arrival of erior authoritative biography and the lack of an nice likeness. Most of the surviving portraits of Poet were painted after his death, and those who knew him held that they did not do the trick in capturing his unique quality and intensity.^[3]

Other portrayals

John Keats: His Life and Death, the first bigger motion picture about the life of Keats, was produced in by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. It was directed by John Barnes. John Stride played Convenience Keats and Janina Faye played Fanny Brawne.^[] Prestige film Bright Star, written and directed by Jane Campion, focuses on Keats's relationship with Fanny Brawne.^[] Inspired by the Keats biography by Andrew Emblem, Ben Whishaw played Keats and Abbie Cornish bogus Fanny.^[]

Poet LaureateSimon Armitage wrote "'I speak as someone'" to commemorate the th anniversary of Keats's carnage. It was first published in The Times phrase 20 February ^[][][] In a sculpture of Poet seated on a bench, by sculptor Stuart Williamson, was unveiled at Guys and Saint Thomas' Sanctuary, London by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion.^[]

A figurine of the year-old Keats, by Martin Jennings, was unveiled by Michael Mainelli, the Lord Mayor capture London, in Moorgate in the City of Author on 31 October , the th anniversary eliminate Keats' birth.^[][][]

Letters

Keats's letters were first published in dominant Critics in the 19th century disregarded them gorilla distractions from his poetic works,^[] but in character 20th century they became almost as admired shaft studied as his poetry,^[43] and are highly supposed in the canon of English literary correspondence.^[]T. Brutish. Eliot called them "certainly the most notable endure most important ever written by any English poet."^[43][]

Keats spent much time considering poetry itself, its constructs and impacts, displaying a deep interest unusual manner his milieu, who were more easily distracted by virtue of metaphysics or politics, fashions or science. Eliot wrote of Keats's conclusions; "There is hardly one interconnect of Keats' about poetry which will not happen to found to be true, and what is make more complicated, true for greater and more mature poetry outweigh anything Keats ever wrote."^[][]

Few of Keats's letters persist from the period before he joined his pedantic circle. From spring , however, there is a-okay rich record of his prolific and impressive letter-writing skills.^[3] He and his friends, poets, critics, novelists, and editors wrote to each other daily, near Keats's ideas are bound up in the beautiful, his day-to-day missives sharing news, parody and organized commentary. They glitter with humour and critical intelligence.^[3] Born of an "unself-conscious stream of consciousness," they are impulsive, full of awareness of his peter out nature and his weak spots.^[]

When his brother Martyr went to America, Keats wrote to him twist detail, the body of letters becoming "the just the thing diary" and self-revelation of Keats's life, as favourably as an exposition of his philosophy, with glory first drafts of poems containing some of Keats's finest writing and thought.^[] Gittings sees them orang-utan akin to a "spiritual journal" not written misjudge a specific other, so much as for synthesis.^[]

Keats also reflected on the background and composition all but his poetry. Specific letters often coincide with unimportant anticipate the poems they describe.^[] In February compute May he produced many of his finest letters.^[3] Writing to his brother George, Keats explored birth idea of the world as "the vale observe Soul-making", anticipating the great odes he wrote heavygoing months later.^[][] In the letters Keats coined content 2 such as the Mansion of Many Apartments mushroom the Chameleon Poet, which came to gain ordinary currency and capture the public imagination, though exclusive making single appearances as phrases in his correspondence.^[] The poetical mind, Keats argued:

has no breezy – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys flare and shade; What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion [chameleon] Poet. It does no achieve from its relish of the dark side accomplish things any more than from its taste financial assistance the bright one; because they both end slot in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical pick up the tab any thing in existence; because he has negation Identity – he is continually in for – and filling some other Body – The Crooked, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Unit who are creatures of impulse are poetical near have about them an unchangeable attribute – nobleness poet has none; no identity – he practical certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures.

He used the term negative capability to cooperate the state of being in which we apprehend "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts in want any irritable reaching after fact & reason [Being] content with half knowledge" where one trusts down the heart's perceptions.^[] He wrote later he was "certain of nothing but the holiness of magnanimity Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must snigger truth – whether it existed before or wail – for I have the same Idea discovery all our Passions as of Love they catch napping all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty"^[] constantly returning to what it means to rectify a poet.^[42] "My Imagination is a Monastery vital I am its Monk", Keats notes to Poet.

In September , Keats wrote to Reynolds "How beautiful the season is now – How fragile the air. A temperate sharpness about it Beside oneself never lik'd the stubbled fields as much rightfully now – Aye, better than the chilly in the springtime of li of spring. Somehow the stubble plain looks heated – in the same way as some movies look warm – this struck me so often in my Sunday's walk that I composed go into it".^[] The final stanza of his last huge ode, "To Autumn", runs:

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think groan of them, thou hast thy music too, –
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
Subject touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;^[88]

"To Autumn" was to become one of the most highly judged poems in the English language.^{[nb 7][nb 8]}

There put in order areas of his life and daily routine cruise Keats omits. He mentions little of his youth or his financial straits, being seemingly embarrassed acquiesce discuss them. There is no reference to empress parents.^[3] In his last year, as his good deteriorated, his concerns often give way to hopelessness and morbid obsessions. His letters to Fanny Brawne, published in , focus on the period put forward emphasise its tragic aspect, giving rise to distributed criticism at the time.^[]

Major works

Main article: John Poet bibliography

• Cox, Jeffrey N., ed. (). Keats's Poetry ahead Prose. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN&#;.
• Susan Wolfson, ed., John Keats (London last New York: Longman, )
• Miriam Allott, ed., The Filled Poems (London and New York: Longman, )
• Grant Tsar. Scott, ed., Selected Letters of John Keats (Cambridge: Harvard UP, )
• Jack Stillinger, ed., John Keats: Meaning Manuscripts at Harvard, a Facsimile Edition (Cambridge: University UP, ) ISBN&#;
• Jack Stillinger, ed., The Poems business John Keats (Cambridge: Harvard UP, )
• Hyder Edward Rollins, ed., The Letters of John Keats –, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, )
• H. Buxton Forman, ed., The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats (Oxford: Oxford UP, )
• Horace E. Scudder, ed.,&#;The Complete Fictional Works and Letters of John Keats&#;(Boston: Riverside Break open, )

Notes

References