Give a brief Life-Sketch of JOHN KEATS.

Ans.

JOHN KEATS (1759-1821)

Birth and Parentage

John Keats was born on 31 October 1795, the first of Frances Jennings and Thomas Keats’ five children one of whom died in infancy. His parents had been wed for barely a year when John was born. His maternal grandparents, John and Alice Jennings, were well-off and, upon his parents’ marriage, had entrusted the management of their livery business to Thomas. These stables, called the Swan and Hoop, were located in North London and provided horses for hire to adjacent neighborhoods. Thomas and Frances lived at the stables through the births of their first three children. George was born on 28 February, 1797 and Thomas on 18 November, 1799. After their births, the young couple felt successful enough to move to a separate house on Craven Street, about a half-mile from the business. Here, on 28 April 1801, their son Edward was born; he died shortly thereafter. And on 3rd June, 1803, the last of their children and only daughter, Frances Mary was born.

His Father’s Death and His Mother’s Remarriage

Keats’ father, Thomas Keats, died on Sunday, 15 April 180, while returning home from visiting John and George at Enfield School. It was believed his horse slipped on the cobblestones and threw him to the ground. Suffering a skull fracture, he lived for a few hours after being found by a night watchman. Barely two months later, on 27 June, 1804, Frances Jennings remarried. Grief-stricken and unable to conduct the livery business herself, she wed a minor bank clerk named William Rawlings. Rawlings was a fortune hunter and the marriage was a failure. The children were immediately sent to live with their grandmother and, a few years later, their mother joined them. She had left Rawlings and, with him, the stables she had inherited from her former husband. From this time on, her health declined precipitously.

Keats’ Finest Poems in a Volume published in 1820

Keats published only one more volume, Hyperion and Other Poems, 1820. This volume contains his great contributions to literature: the fragmentary Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes, the splendid odes To Autumn, To a Nightingale, On Melancholy, and On a Grecian Urn; and the ballad, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. All these are precious treasures of English poetry.

Keats’ Illness and Death

An unmistakable sign of consumption in February. 1820 however broke all his plans for the future, marking the beginning of what he called his ‘posthumous life’. He could not enjoy the positive resonance on the publication of the volume ‘Lamia, Isabella & C.’. including his most celebrated odes. In the late summer of 1820, Keats was ordered by his doctors to avoid the English winter and move to Italy. His friend Joseph Severn accompanied him south-first to Naples, and then to Rome. His health improved momentarily, only to collapse finally. Keats died in Rome on the 23rd of February, 1821. He was buried on the Protestant Cemetery, near the grave of Caius Cestius. On his desire, the following lines were engraved on his tombstone: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”