John Keats

John Keats (1795-1821)

The first son of a stable-keeper, he had a sister and three brothers, one of whom died in infancy.  When John was eight years old, his father was killed in an accident. In the same year his mother married again, but a little later separated from her husband and took her family to live with her mother. John Keats attended a good school where he became well acquainted with ancient and contemporary literature.

 In 1810 his mother died of consumption of alcohol, leaving the children to their grandmother. The old lady put them under the care of two guardians, to whom she gave a respectable amount of money for the benefit of the orphans. Under the authority of the guardians, he was taken from school to be an apprentice to a surgeon.

In 1814, before completion of his apprenticeship, John left his master after a quarrel, becoming a hospital student in London. Under the guidance of his friend Cowden Clarke he devoted himself increasingly to literature.

In 1814 Keats finally sacrificed his medical ambitions to a literary life. He soon got acquainted with celebrated artists of his time, like Leigh Hunt, Percy B. Shelley and Benjamin Robert Haydon. In May 1816, Hunt helped him publish his first poem in a magazine. A year later Keats published about thirty poems and sonnets printed in the volume "Poems".

Keats was only 26 years old when he died.  He was born in Finsbury Pavement near London on October 31, 1795.