John Keats

Keats, John (1795-1821), English poet and letter writer whose work carried the Romantic movement in England to rich maturity. Despite his tragically early death at the age of 25, Keats composed poetry of great power and beauty in a surprisingly wide variety of kinds: a fragmentary epic, Hyperion; several romances, including Endymion and The Eve of St. Agnes; and a miscellany of shorter lyrics, of which the best known are the sonnets and a series of major odes, including "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "To Autumn." Keats's famous letters record the growth of his art and thought in vivid and moving detail.

Keats's literary influence has been extensive; among later writers who admired and imitated his work were Tennyson, Browning, and Yeats. Although Keats has been categorized as a "poet's poet," whose dedication to art overrode all other considerations, moral, political, and religious, a truer portrait would stress his moral centrality and his balanced good sense as a man and artist, as well as his superb practical command of his craft. Keats today ranks among the very few poets who can bear comparison, by virtue of their imaginative amplitude and power, to Shakespeare.

Life. Keats was born in London on Oct. 31, 1795. His mother, Frances Keats, was the only daughter of John Jennings, the owner of the Swan and Hoop, a livery stable near the northern boundary of the city. His father, Thomas Keats, was head ostler at the stable, later becoming manager and, in 1803, owner. Keats was the first of five children. He had three brothers (George, Tom, and a brother who died in infancy, Edward) and a sister, Frances (or Fanny).

Early Life and Education. In 1803, at the age of eight, Keats was sent to the Clarke Academy in Enfield, a country village