Keats

John Keats (1795–1821) was an English Romantic poet whose lyric gifts and intense sensibility helped shape the period. Born in London on October 31, 1795, he pursued medical training as a surgeon-apothecary and studied at Guy’s Hospital before choosing poetry over a medical career. He moved in a London literary circle that included Leigh Hunt and other writers, and he published Poems in 1817, which established him as a rising talent. Endymion (1818) drew sharp criticism, but his craft continued to mature, leading to a sequence of increasingly celebrated works.

Keats’s poetry is renowned for its vivid sensory imagery, musical phrasing, and an enduring preoccupation with beauty, imagination, and the transience of life. He drew on classical myth and contemporary observation to explore how art can reveal truth beyond rational explanation. The idea of what is often called negative capability—describing a poet’s ability to pursue uncertainty and mystery without irritable emphasis on facts—has been linked to his method, highlighting his tolerance for ambiguity in the service of poetic insight. His best-known works from the later period include the odes of 1819—Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn—and the seasonal meditation To Autumn (1820). Earlier, he published Lamia and, again, Endymion, which signaled his ascendancy but divided readers at the time.

Keats left England for Italy in hopes of improving his health and died in Rome on February 23, 1821, at the age of 25. He is buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. Though his life was brief, Keats’s lyrics are regarded as a cornerstone of English Romantic poetry and have influenced generations of writers through their celebration of beauty, imagination, and the mystery of perception.