John Keats

Literature / Writer's Datebook: October 31

One of the Best English Romantic Poets, Famous for Odes

Brief biography of the life and works of English poet John Keats, one of the world's best Romantic poets known for odes. Including 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.'  

 

John Keats was one of the finest poets of the Romantic school of writing. He was born in London (October 31, 1795), the eldest of five children.  His father kept horses for hire, a livery-stable keeper, but died when Keats was only 8 years old. He then grew up in his grandmother's home at Edmonton, near London.  

Early Training, Education and Influence

At school he read widely, won prizes and learned to love poetry. He loved reading works of Edmund Spenser in particular. He studied medicine at Edmonton, at Guy's Hospital, London, and apprenticed to a surgeon. Meanwhile he was composing verses and meeting other young romantic writers, including Leigh Hunt, famous for Story of Rimini. It was Hunt who introduced Keats to poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Early career as a Poet

Keats gave up medicine to write, living poorly off a little money left by his grandmother. He also published his first sonnets in The Examiner. His first volume of poems combined 'Hymn to Pan' and the 'Bacchic procession' anticipating his future great odes. His first published poem, 'O Solitude,' appeared in a magazine when he was 21.

Major Works, including Famous Odes

Two years later, his first long mythological poem, Endymion, was published. It tells in 4,000 lines of the love of the moon goddess Cynthia for the young shepherd Endymion. He then produced the epic poems "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion." The same year he wrote his famous odes: 'Ode to a Nightingale,' 'Ode to Autumn,' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' "Ode on Melancholy,' and 'Ode toTo Psyche' and most of his other best pieces. These poems use vivid word pictures to praise the world's beautiful things, yet alloyed with sadness because Keats knew he cannot enjoy forever.

Last Years and Early Death 

He was in despair for good reasons. He was too poor to marry Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved. His mother and brother Tom had died of tuberculosis. And by age 24 Keats also had the disease. Already ill, he sailed for to Italy to escape England's cold winter but died there early the next year, at the young age of 25.

The house in which he died is now a place of literary pilgrimage with library of English romantic literature, known as Keats-Shelley house.  

 

Image Credit:

John Keats. NNDB / Public Domain.

 

Works by John Keats

Poems with 'Hymn to Pan' and the 'Bacchic procession'  1817

'O Solitude'  1816

Poems  1817

Endymion  1818

'Hyperion', epic poem  1819

'The Fall of Hyperion', epic poem  1819

Lamia  and other poems, including his famous Hellenic odes 'On a Grecian Urn' and 'To Psyche'  1820

'Isabella'  1820

'The Eve of St. Agnes'  1820

'The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy'  1888 (Published after he died)

 

Resources:

Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. 1994.

Ousby, Ian. Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. 1993

 

Note: I first published this piece for Suite101.com (now close). / Tel   

 

(c) October 2008. Updated October 31, 2016. Tel.  Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.