John Keats

1795–1821 · England

Wrote his greatest poetry in the final two years of his life, before dying of tuberculosis at twenty-five.

Keats was a trained medical student who gave up surgery for poetry. He published his first book at twenty-one and was savagely reviewed; the critics' cruelty may have accelerated his decline.

He fell in love with Fanny Brawne in 1818 and became engaged to her shortly before leaving London for Rome, hoping the warmer climate would cure his tuberculosis. He died there, aged twenty-five, and is buried in the Protestant cemetery with the epitaph 'Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water'.

Style

Synesthesia: experiences are described through multiple senses at once — 'heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter'.
The 'negative capability' — a phrase he coined for the poet's ability to hold uncertainty without trying to resolve it.
Long vowels and sibilants in his odes, creating a music that feels both luxurious and fragile.
Shakespearean sonnets in his early work; odes and long poems in his maturity.