John Keats Bio, Poetry, and Poems

English Romantic Poet, Famous for Odes

Oct 31, 2007

Biography of John Keats, one of the world's best poets.

John Keats was one of the finest English poets of the Romantic school of writing. He was famous for the "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode to a Grecian Urn," and "Ode to Autumn."

Keats was born in London (October 31, 1795), the eldest of five children. His father was a livery-stable keeper, but died when Keats was only 8 years old. He 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 poems and the 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 introduced Keats to fellow-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

At 23, his first long mythological poem, "Endymion," was published. In 4,000 lines, it tells 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." He also wrote his famous odes: "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode to Autumn," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," and "Ode to Psyche" and most of his other best pieces. These poems use vivid word pictures to praise the world's beautiful things, yet are alloyed with sadness because Keats knew he could not enjoy them 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 Italy to escape England's cold winter but died there 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.

Works by John Keats

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