John Keats (1795-1821), English lyric poet, usually regarded as the archetype of the Romantic
writer. Keats felt that the deepest meaning of life lay in the apprehension of
material beauty, although his mature poems reveal his fascination with a world
of death and decay. Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795 as the son of a livery-stable manager. He was the oldest of four children, who remained deeply devoted to each other. After their father died in 1804, Keats's mother remarried but the marriage was soon broken. She moved with the children, John and his sister Fanny and brothers George and Tom, to live with her mother at Edmonton, near London. She died of tuberculosis in 1810.
At school Keats read widely. He was educated at Clarke's School in Enfield, where he began a translation of the Aeneid. In1811 he was apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary. His first poem, "Lines in Imitation of Spenser", was written in 1814. In that year he moved to London and resumed his surgical studies in 1815 as a student at Guy's hospital. Next year he became a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. Before devoting himself entirely to poetry, Keats worked as a dresser and junior house surgeon. In London he had met the editor of The Examiner, Leigh Hunt, who introduced him to other young Romantics, including Shelley. His poem, "O Solitude", also appeared in The Examiner.
Keats's first book, Poems, was published in 1817. It was about this time Keats started to use his letters as the vehicle of his thoughts of poetry. "Endymion", Keats's first long poem appeared, when he was 21. Keats's greatest works were written in the late 1810s, among them "Lamia", "The Eve of St. Agnes", the great odes including "Ode to a Nightingale", Ode To Autumn" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn". He worked briefly as a theatrical critic for The Champion.
Keats spent three months in 1818 attending his brother Tom, who was seriously ill with tuberculosis. After Tom's death in December, Keats moved to Hampstead. In the winter of 1818-19 he worked mainly on "Hyperion".
In 1820 the second volume of Keats poems appeared and gained critical success. However, Keats was suffering from tuberculosis and his poems were marked with sadness partly because he was too poor to marry Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved.
Declining Shelley's invitation to join him at Pisa, Keats went to Rome, where he died at the age of 25, on February 23, 1821. Keats told his friend Joseph Severn that he wanted on his grave just the line, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
http://www.online-literature.com/keats/
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