John Keats was born in 1795 in London to Johathan Utley, a hostler. When Keats was age nine, his father died after falling from a horse, and one year later - in 1805 - his grandfather died. His mother, Frances Jennings Keats, remarried soon afterwards, but quickly left the new husband and moved herself and her children to live with Keats's grandmother, Alice Jennings. There, Keats attended a school that first instilled a love of literature in him. In 1810, however, his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving Keats and three siblings in their grandmother's custody.

His grandmother appointed two guardians to manage her charges, and these individuals saw fit to remove Keats from school to become a surgeon's apprentice at Thomas Hammond's apothecary shop in Edmonton. Keats continued these studies until a fight with his master in 1814. He then left his apprenticeship and because a student at Guy's Hospital (now part of King's College in London). At the same time, he became more involved with literature. Between 1814 and 1819, Keats wrote "Isabella," "St. Agnes' Eve" and "Lamia." Parts of Hyperion and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho The Great also were written during that time.

Like his mother, Keats developed tuberculosis in 1820. He left London to live with his friend, Joseph Severn, in Italy. Keats moved into a house, which is now a museum that is dedicated to his life and work, The Keats-Shelley House, on the Spanish Steps, in Rome, where despite attentive care from Severn and Dr. John Clark, the poet's health rapidly deteriorated. He died in 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request was to be buried under a tombstone reading, "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." His name was not to appear on the stone. Despite these requests, however, Severn and Brown also added the epitaph: "This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone" along with the image of a lyre with broken strings.

Keats developed one romantic relationship during his short life, with Fanny Brawne. This relationship was cut short by his illness, and Fanny later married Louis Lindon, Esq. She had told her children about her relationship with the now-famous Keats and, whne Lindon died in 1872, her children profited from their mother's history. That information scandalized a Victorian society, which paid handsomely for that information. In 1937, a collection of 31 letters, written by Fanny Brawne to Keats' sister, Frances, were published by Oxford University Press. Those letters revealed the depth of Brawne's feelings toward Keats and in many ways attempted to redeem her rather promiscuous reputation.

Keats is considered as one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. During his short life, his work received constant critical attacks from periodicals of the day, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson has been immense. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize Keats's poetry, including a series of odes that were his masterpieces and which remain among the most popular poems in English literature. The largest collection of Keats's letters, manuscripts, and other papers is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Other collections of such material can be found at the British Library; Keats House, Hampstead; The Keats-Shelley House, Rome; and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

Image: Portrait of John Keats by William Hilton, after Joseph Severn (National Portrait Gallery, London).