John Keats

John Keats lived only twenty-five years and four months (1785-1821), yet his poetic
achievement was extraordinary. His literary career lasted a little more than five years (1814-
1821), and three of his great odes… “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, and “Ode
on Melancholy” …were written in one month. Most of his major poems were written between his
twenty-third and twenty-fourth years. In this brief period, he produced poems that rank him as
one of the great English poets. He also wrote letters which T.S. Eliot calls “the most notable and
the important ever written by any English poet.”
Keats was born in London to Thomas Keats and Frances Jennings. He was the eldest of
five children. Both of his parents were of poor and working-class background. He became
orphan at the age of eight and was brought up by his grandmother. He received his early
education at school in Enfield. He studied to become doctor at the age of fifteen but left his
medical career to follow his literary inclinations.
His work was not generally well perceived during his lifetime or immediately after his
death. Keats, dying, expected his poetry to be forgotten, as the epitaph he wrote for his
tombstone indicates: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” But the nineteenth century
critics and readers did come to appreciate him, though, for the most part, they had only a partial
understanding of his work. They saw Keats as a sensual poet; they focused on his vivid, concrete
imagery; on his portrayal of the physical and the passionate, and on his immersion of here and
now.
With the twentieth century, the perception of Keats’ poetry expanded, he was and his
praised for his seriousness and thoughtfulness, for his dealing with difficult human conflicts and
artistic issues, and for his impassioned mental pursuit of the truth. Keats advocated living “the
ripest, fullest experience that one is capable of”; he believed that what determines truth is
experience (“axioms are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses”).
The publication of Keats’ letters, with their keen intellectual questioning and concern
with moral and artistic problems, contributed to this re-assessment. His letters throw light on his
own poetic practices and provide insight into his writing in general. Thus, even today his poems
and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English Literature.