His father, Thomas Keats, managed the stable at an inn2 known as the "Swan and Hoop" located in the north end of London, in the Hampstead area. Thomas was to marry his employer's daughter, Frances Jennings. Four children were born to the union: the oldest was John, born in 1795, followed along by George, Tom and Frances (Fanny). The parents died early; the father, as a result of a fall from a horse in 1804; the mother of tuberculosis in 1810. After their father's death, the mother having remarried,3 the Keats children moved in with grandmother Jennings.

John Keats attended school at Enfield (in the general neighbourhood of the Jennings household) where he was befriended by the schoolmaster's son, Charles Cowden Clarke.4 Clarke, eight years older, was to have a considerable influence on the young Keats. In 1810, the same year during which his mother died, John, at the tender age of fifteen, was to leave school. He was then to be apprenticed, "with a premium of £210," to Mr. Hammond, a surgeon of some repute at Edmonton.5 For whatever reason (it is not clear why) Keats left Hammond before he completed his apprenticeship. On the first of October, 1815, Keats entered Guy's Hospital. He remained at Guy's Hospital for only six months, leaving so to devote his time exclusively to the writing of poetry, thus to join the "beggar-clan."6

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No. 2 -- From Medicine To Poetry:-

Leigh Hunt ran a newspaper in London, the Examiner. It had been established in 1808. Hunt, as the editor, together with his brother, as the printer, in a case that was to be a cause célèbre was convicted in 1813 of having libeled the Prince Regent. Their sentence -- considered harsh even in those days -- in addition to paying a large fine was that each brother was to spend two years in prison. Upon him coming out of prison in 1815 Leigh Hunt was less inclined to political commentary and turned more to literary composition. In 1816, Hunt had his long narrative poem, "The Story of Rimini" published. While this work had a mixed reception, it was to bring two young poets to his door step.7 The young poets, of course were Percy Bysshe Shelley8 and John Keats. Hunt dispensed enthusiasm and encouragement to both Keats and Shelley; and, most importantly, gave them access to the columns of the Examiner. That December (1816) there appeared in the Examiner an article written by Hunt entitled "Young Poets"; two of the young poets to whom he made reference was Shelley and Keats.

Keats' interest in poetry did not suddenly come upon him; Charles Cowden Clarke, his school days mentor, had obviously sparked that interest. In spite of his full time devotion and industry to the writing of it, his poetry might never have come into vogue if he did not have the combined assistance of Hunt and Shelley. Hunt was to be his avenue to getting his work published. Shelley was a charming personality, who, notwithstanding that he was in 1816 only twenty-four years old (Keats, twenty-one) had had experience in the writing and publication of poetry.9 In March of 1817 John Keats published his first book of poetry. His next project was to be somewhat different, for he had in his brain the germ of his first large work, a poetic fantasy.

The most talked about and renowned poetic fantasy of these times was Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and while it had been first published in 1798 it was yet, eighteen years later, sending up a wash along the banks of literature. For an epic poem which gave an accounting of a poet's travels, Keats would have had freshly before him Byron's Childe Harold. Childe Harold was published in 1812 and it had established Byron's reputation. Childe Harold was written while Byron traveled east through Europe and then on to Greece. In 1816, when the young Keats determined to write poetry, Byron was in Geneva writing the third canto of Childe Harold and also writing the first two cantos of Don Juan, his masterpiece, an epic-satire. It happened that in the months of May through to August of 1816 Shelley had traveled to Geneva and was to meet and then to spend time, with his two female traveling companions, cavorting on the banks of Lake Geneva with Lord Byron. Back in England, that autumn of 1816, Shelley, as we have seen, was to meet John Keats and the two of them were to spent time together. I think it safe to conclude that Shelley10 was enthusiastically telling of his first meeting with Lord Byron and of his continuing work on Childe Harold and how he was beginning a new work, Don Juan. What I think became plain to Keats is that it would be necessary, following the examples of both Byron and Shelley, to get out on the road.11 Thus Keats strapped on his knapsack and set out to the southeast of England; so to soak up the essential qualities and properties of the places he was to visit; so to gain the needed material and inspiration; so to write poetry.

On April 15th, 1817, then at Southampton, Keats wrote his brothers: "I did not know the Names of any of the Towns I passed through all I can tell you is that sometimes I saw dusty Hedges sometimes Ponds ..."12 On April 17th, he was on the Isle of Wight. ("On the Sea -- It keeps eternal Whisperings around ...") From there he traveled up to Margate. At Margate, on May 10th, he wrote Hunt and Shelley: "Does Shelley go on telling strange Stories of the Death of Kings?" Then, still at Margate, he writes his artist friend, Haydon,13 "I read and write about eight hours a day." It was during these travels along the south coast of England between the Isle of Wight and Margate that Keats was writing his first major work and did indeed complete Books I and II of Endymion. Still at Margate, on May 17th, he writes his publishers, Taylor and Hessey: "I found my brain so overwrought that I had neither Rhyme nor reason in it -- so was obliged to give up for a few days ... This evening I go to Canterbury -- having got tired of Margate."14

At some point in his travels during the springtime of 1817 Keats met for the first time Benjamin Bailey (b.1791). We don't know much about Bailey, except that he seems to have been from the upper class.15 By September, Keats is at Oxford staying with Bailey where he completes Book III of Endymion.16 By October 8th, Keats had returned to Hampstead.17

It was in the fall of 1817, it would appear, that Keats was invited by his friend, Charles Armitage Brown18 to move in with him into a house located at Hampstead not far from where he was born. The house, Wentworth Place19, was a pair of semi-detached residences which shared a garden. Keats paid Brown £5 a month for board and lodging and had his own small sitting room at the back of the house with a bedroom above.

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No. 3 -- Hob-nobbing In London (1818):-

On November 22nd, 1817, Keats wrote letters to two of his friends, John Reynolds and Benjamin Bailey. Both of these letters were postmarked Leatherhead, a place which is across the Thames in south London. "My Brother Tom is much improved -- he is going to Devonshire -- whither I shall follow him -- at present I am just arrived at Dorking [south again of Leatherhead] ..." By December 21st John is writing his brothers who were then located at Teignmouth. John's letter is dated at Hampstead.20 It would seem that a decision was made by the brothers to get Tom as far south as they might, as Tom, like their mother, seven years before, was now suffering from the effects of tuberculosis. John, it seems, accompanied his brothers Tom and George part way with the promise to join them as soon as he could. John Keats was obliged to return and stay at London as his work, Endymion, had reached the editing stage and there was a publisher waiting. With the opening of 1818, January 5th, we see where John wrote his brothers at Teignmouth. John heads up his letter, "Featherstone Building." During this time he is dealing with his publisher and revising his Endymion and making the rounds at London. He attends the lectures that William Hazlitt was then giving at London. Keats is a regular visitor at Haydon's who has moved from Great Marlborough Street to his new studio at Lisson Grove North, there to party with Wordsworth, Lamb, and others.21 On January 23rd, at London, Keats writes "I have sent my first book [Endymion] to the Press [Taylor and Hessey]." "I have seen a good deal of Wordsworth. Hazlitt is lecturing on Poetry at the Surrey institution -- I shall be there next Tuesday."22 On February 21st, in a letter from Hampstead, to his brothers, Keats gives us his feelings about Wordsworth: "Wordsworth has left a bad impression where ever he visited in town by his egotism, vanity, and bigotry." In a later letter, dated in March to Haydon, he writes, that "Wordsworth went [from London to the Lakes?]. I can't help thinking he has returned to his Shell -- with his beautiful Wife and his enchanting Sister." In another he writes, "I am afraid Wordsworth went rather huff'd out of Town -- I am sorry for it."23

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No. 4 -- Scottish Tour:-

On March 13th, the very day that Shelley left Dover for Calais on his way to Italy, John Keats was writing his friend Benjamin Bailey at Oxford.24 He was then at Teignmouth with his brothers having come down from London. By April 8th, still at Teignmouth, he writes that Tom is getting "greatly better." John now intends to, "within a Month to put my knapsack at my back and make a pedestrian tour through the North of England, and part of Scotland ..."25 On May 25th, Keats was back at Hampstead telling of his plans of how he was about to leave with his friend Charles Brown for their tour of Scotland, a country in which Brown's family had roots. At some point in this period his brother George announced his plans to marry, did so, and immediately took a ship for America.26 With George off to America to discover his fortune and John off for a pedestrian tour of Scotland, the youngest brother Tom was alone for a number of weeks at Hampstead (Well Walk). After traveling north, likely by coach, Keats and Brown were, by June 27th, in the north of England, "The Lake District," the home territory of Wordsworth and Southey. It is there that Keats began his journal of his walking tour with Brown.27

The main object for Keats and Brown was to tour Scotland, so not much time was spent in the Lake District. Within a week they had walked through the area and were nearing Scotland. On July 1st they were at Carlisle. "I fear our continued moving from place to place, will prevent our becoming learned in village affairs; we are mere creatures of Rivers, Lakes, and Mountains. ... We have now walked 114 miles, and are merely a little tired in the thighs and a little blistered; We shall ride 38 miles to Dumfries ..."28 By July 14th they were at Glasgow. On the 18th, at Inverary.

"We have come over heath and rock and river and bog to what in England would be called a horrid place -- yet it belongs to a Shepherd pretty well off perhaps. The family speak not a word but gaelic and we have not yet seen their faces for the smoke which after visiting every cranny, (not excepting my eyes very much incommoded for writing), finds its way out at the door. I am more comfortable than I could have imagined in such a place, and so is Brown. The people are all very kind."29

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No. 5 -- Attacked:-

Keats' first epic poem Endymion, which came out in 1818, is a story about the relationship between a goddess and her human lover. The work came about as a result of a competition between himself and Shelley.33 Rossetti, relates the story, as part of his rather thorough analysis34 of Endymion, that the two should each produce such a work. In the result Shelley came out with The Revolt of Islam; and Keats, Endymion. Rossetti, further observed that "Shelley proved to be the more rapid writer of the two; his poem of 4,815 lines was finished by the early autumn of 1817, while Keats's, numbering 4,050 lines, went on through the winter ..." The first line of Endymion -- "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever" -- is notorious to all lovers of poetry. Clearly, Endymion contains lines of beauty which gives joy to those who read them, but the over all work was considered faulty. This due to the inexperience of the poet and the manner in which the work came into being: it "will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished."35

In an edition of an Edinburgh paper, Quarterly Review, in 1818, there appeared a critique which "branded into ignominious permanence ... the name and fame of Keats."36 The editor of Quarterly Review was William Gifford (1756-1826) who had been its editor since 1809. It was Gifford's good fortune to be befriended by the rich and famous. As a critic "he was unduly biased."37 In any event Gifford wrote a review of Endymion:

"It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody) -- it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius. He has all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called 'Cockney Poetry,' which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language. ... He seems to us to write a line at random, and then he follows, not the thought excited by this line, but that suggested by the rhyme with which it concludes. There is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He wonders from one subject to another, from the association, not of ideas, but of sounds ..."38

Gifford had an ally in John Gibson Lockhart.41 Lockhart was the editor of another Edinburgh paper, the Blackwood's Magazine. Lockhart readily joined in on the attack on the "Cockney School of Poetry." Actually, Blackwood's, this Tory (conservative) magazine out of Edinburgh had started in earlier, and, indeed, had coined the expression the "Cockney School" in its edition of October, 1817, when in its pages it inveighed against Leigh Hunt who ran the Examiner, a Whig (liberal) magazine out of London. With the appearance of Gifford's piece skewering poor Keats, in 1818, out came Lockhart with his vituperative piece against Keats.

"To witness the disease of any human understanding, however feeble, is distressing; but the spectacle of an able mind reduced to a state of insanity is of course ten times more afflicting. It is with such sorrow as this that we have contemplated the case of Mr John Keats. ... He was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. But all has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady. ... For some time we were in hopes, that he might get off with a violent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible. The phrenzy of the "Poems" was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy of Endymion."

Benjamin Haydon was to write that the articles against Keats and his poetry had a melancholic effect on the young poet. "[Blackwood's] attacks on all who showed the least liberalism of thinking or who were praised by or known to the Examiner.42 ... On Keats the effect was melancholy. He became morbid and silent, would call and sit whilst I was painting for hours without speaking a word."43

Keats, it would certainly appear from his correspondence at the time, couldn't have treated this attack in a more self-possessed, measured, and dignified spirit. He was to write: "The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself. In Endymion I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."44

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No. 6 -- Sorrow, Love and the Writing of Poetry:-

After his Scottish tour, in 1818 John Keats went back to nursing his brother and continued to do so until Tom's death that December. Tom died of tuberculosis. Whether the family had a propensity to come down with consumptive disease, I do not know; though, it certainly seems so. What we do know is that tuberculosis is a contagious disease, thus it is likely that the brotherly love extended during the last few month's of Tom's life, was to be the death of John Keats. Tom having died, for all practical purposes, Keats was left alone without family. His parents were dead; Tom was now dead at the age of only 20 years; George had departed for America; and "his girlish sister [was] a permanent inmate of the household of Mr. and Mrs. Abby at Walthamstow."45 In February of 1819, Keats wrote George, "I am still at Wentworth Place -- indeed I have kept in doors lately, resolved if possible to rid myself of my sore throat."46

It is now time for a brief note on Fanny Brawne: As already mentioned, Wentworth Place had on the other side another dwelling which, in May of 1819, was to see new tenants move in: a widow, Mrs Brawne and her three children. One of these children was a young woman, Fanny Brawne, with whom Keats was to fall hopelessly in love. Keats began writing love letters to Fanny in July: "I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than 50 common years could ever contain." As for Fanny, well, she did not seem to be quite as keen for John Keats as he was for her. However things did progress to the point where the couple declared that they would marry. "This [the engagement] was contrary to Mrs. Brawne's liking. They appear to have contemplated -- anything but willingly on the poet's part -- a tolerably long engagement; for he was a young man of twenty-three, with stinted means, no regular profession, and no occupation save that of producing verse derided in the high places of criticism."47 It could be that Mrs. Brawne required a cooling off period but just as likely it was because Keats calculated it was time to refill his poetic vessel with the experiences to be gained by further travel: Keats separated himself from Fanny for a period of time.

In the early part of the summer of 1819, Keats traveled to the Isle of Wight, a place he had chosen to start out with when he solely traveled about in 1817, and which led to the production of his first major work, Endymion. There at Shanklin he shared rooms, at first, with a friend James Rice who was later replaced by his hiking friend Charles Brown. In a letter to his sister dated July 6th he sets out his reason for his stay at Shanklin, "to try the fortune of my pen once more ... Our window looks over house tops and Cliffs onto the Sea ... We have Hill and Dale forest and mead and plenty of lobsters." Further, "I would rather be here alone at my desk than in the bustle and hateful literary chitchat." It is here, at Shanklin, that Keats writes Lamia. At some point before August 14th, Keats and Brown leave the Isle of Wight.

"We removed to Winchester for the convenience of a library and find it an exceeding pleasant Town, enriched with a beautiful Cathedrall and surrounded by a fresh looking country. We are in tolerably good and cheap Lodgings. Within these two Months I have written 1500 Lines, most of which besides many more of prior composition you will probably see by next winter. I have written two tales, one from Boccaccio call'd the Pot of Basil [Isabella]; and another call'd St. Agnes' Eve on a popular superstition; and a third call'd Lamia -- half finished -- I have also been writing parts of my Hyperion and completed 4 Acts of a Tragedy [Otho The Great]."48

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No. 7 -- The Death Of Keats:-

During the last year of his life, 1820, Keats' health went steadily down hill. He was as much in love with Fanny as ever but he knew that their union was an impossibility. On February 4th we see that he was writing to Fanny Brawne from his sick bed who was but beyond a wall at Wentworth Place. "They say I must remain confined to this room for some time. The consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant prison of the house next to yours." On February 10th, another letter to Fanny Brawne: "On the night I was taken ill -- when so violent a rush of blood came to my Lungs that I felt nearly suffocated ... I shall be looking forward to Health and the Spring and a regular routine of our old Walks." And again in another letter in the same month: "I am recommended not even to read poetry, much less write it. I wish I had even a little hope. I cannot say forget me -- but I would mention that there are impossibilities in the world." In May Keats is obliged to move from Wentworth Place to Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town. On June 23rd, Keats wrote his sister and told how he wanted to make a trip up town to visit his publisher as his new work (containing Lamia, Isabella, etc.) were about to come out. However, "I set myself to come to town, but was not able for just as I was setting out yesterday morning a slight spitting of blood came on which returned rather copiously at night."

On hearing of this bad spell that Keats had in June, his friend and publisher of his poems, Leigh Hunt, determined to get involved. Hunt brought Keats into his home. Incidently, it was during the summer that Keats' last volume was published and which contained his best works.50 In July there was talk of Keats getting himself off to the warming weather of Italy.51 In August, Keats heard from his fellow poet, Shelley. Shelley was then in Italy. An invitation was extended by Shelley that Keats should come and stay with him in Italy. With this, Keats made up his mind: "There is no doubt that an English winter would put an end to me, and do so in a lingering, hateful manner. Therefore, I must either voyage or journey to Italy, as a soldier marches up to a battery."52 Fanny, really, made the decision for Keats. John should go to Italy, in order to get better. For John, it was more, "I should go to Italy to spare Fanny the miseries of my death." His publisher, John Taylor, raised a subscription among his friends so that Keats might have the necessary money for the trip. And so it was, that in September of 1820, Keats and his friend, the painter Joseph Severn, boarded the sailing vessel, Maria Crowther.

Keats and Severn arrived at Naples Harbour on 21 October 1820. John Keats at this point was a very sick man.53 His poetry writing days were over.54 After spending a period of time in routine quarantine the pair made their way to Rome, arriving there on November 15th, 1820. From Naples Keats might have gone down to Shelley's, who was then at Pisa, but he was to pass Pisa up for Rome. At Rome there was a very famous Scottish doctor, by the name of James Clark55 with whom Keats' friends had already corresponded. Clarke determined to assist Keats and help him through his illness; among other things, Clarke arranged for lodgings for Keats and Severn opposite his own, in central Rome, up the Spanish Steps leading to the Trinità dei Monti.

During his last couple of months in Rome he did manage to get around with the help of his friend, Joseph Severn, to explore a little bit of his immediate neighbourhood usually to take the evening air. On the 10th of December, 1820, there came a turning point, as, Keats suffered a serious hemorrhage. He recovered slightly for Christmas but on the 10th of January he was in a very serious state and after that confined to his bed. John Keats died on February 23rd, 1821. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, behind the Pyramid in Testaccio. He was only 25 years old at the time of his death.56

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No. 8 -- Conclusion:-

William Michael Rossetti -- who as a critic of poets and poetry must be put in the front rank -- thought that none of Keats' work had much merit.57 Keats was, as Rossetti wrote, "many-mooded, with a tendency to perverse self-conflict. The circumstances of his brief career -- his poetic ambition, his want of any definite employment, his association with men of literary occupation or taste whom he only half approved, the critical venom poured forth against him, his love thwarted by a mortal malady -- all these things tended to bring out the unruly or morbid." Rossetti thought Keats' poetry was "emotional without substance, and beautiful without control."

The contemporary artist and personal friend of John Keats, Benjamin Haydon was to write:

"One day he was full of an epic poem; the next day epic poems were splendid impositions on the world. Never for two days did he know his own intentions. ... The death of his brother wounded him deeply, and it appeared to me that he began to droop from that hour. I was much attracted to Keats, and he had a fellow-feeling for me. I was angry because he would not bend his great powers to some definite object, and always told him so. Latterly he grew irritated because I would shake my head at his irregularities, and tell him that he would destroy himself ... Poor Keats! had nature given you firmness as well as fineness of nerve, you would have been glorious in your maturity as great in your promise."58

"If the fulfillment may ever safely be prophesied from the promise, England appears to have lost in Keats one whose gifts in Poetry have rarely been surpassed. Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, had their lives been closed at twenty-five, would (so far as we know) have left poems of less excellence and hope than the youth who, from the petty school and the London surgery, passed at once to a place with them of 'high collateral glory.'"59

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"The earth is our throne and the Sea a mighty Minstrell playing before it ..." ("Letters." To Jane Reynolds, September 14, 1817.)

"Ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win / It aches in loneliness -- is ill at peace" (Isabella.)

"Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers, / Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers." (Isabella.)

"Sweet birds antheming the morn:" ("Fancy.")

"She hurried at his words, beset with fears, / For there were sleeping dragons all around," (Eve of St. Agnes.)

"Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy?" (Lamia.)

"We know her woof, her texture; she is given / In the dull catalogue of common things. / Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings," (Lamia.)

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness;" (Endymion.)

"A thousand Powers keep religious state, / In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne;" (Endymion.)

"... she hurried back, as swift / As bird on wing to breast its eggs again;" (Isabella.)

"What wine? The strong Iberian juice, or mellow Greek? Or pale Calabrian?" (Otho The Great.)

"Nations drows'd in peace!" (Otho The Great.)

"For many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death." ("Ode to the Nightingale.")

"Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem / Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?" (Endymion.)

"Hoodwink'd with faery fancy." (Eve of St. Agnes.)

"... self-folding like a flower / That faints into itself at evening hour:" (Lamia.)

"... So Sweet Isabel / By gradual decay from beauty fell," (Isabella.)

"A little breeze to creep between the fans / Of careless butterflies: ...." (Endymion.)

"And from her chamber-window he would catch / Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;" (Isabella.)

"These lovers fled away into the storm." (Eve of St. Agnes.)

"Only to meet again more close, and share / The inward fragrance of each other’s heart." (Isabella.)

"... this fair lady dwelt, / Enriched from ancestral merchandize," (Isabella.)

"He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch, / Before the door had given her to his eyes;" (Isabella.)

"Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, / Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine -- / Unweave a rainbow," (Lamia.)

"How to entangle, trammel up and snare / Your soul in mine, and labyrinth you there / Like the hid scent in an unbudded rose?" (Lamia.)

"... if thy mistress some rich anger shows, / Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave," ("Ode On Melancholy.")

"O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, / Let it not be among the jumbled heap / Of murky buildings; ..." ("O Solitude.")

"... the moon lifting her silver rim / Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim / Coming into the blue with all her light." ("I stood tip-toe upon a little hill.")

"... then there crept / A little noiseless noise among the leaves, / Born of the very sigh that silence heaves." ("I stood tip-toe upon a little hill.")

"Then 'gan she work again; nor stay'd her care, / But to throw back at times her veiling hair." (Isabella.)

"... a hundred swords / Will storm his heart, Love’s fev’rous citadel:" (Eve of St. Agnes.)

"I equally dislike the favour of the public, with the love of a woman -- they are both a cloying treacle to the wings of independence." ("Letters." To John Taylor, August 23rd, 1819.)

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty." ("Ode on a Grecian Urn.")

"That was before we knew the winged thing, / Victory, might be lost, or might be won" (Hyperion.)

"... where am I now? / Not in your heart while care weighs on your brow:" (Lamia.)

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1795:

John Keats was born.

1804:

April 16th: Keats' father dies.

1808:

The Hunt brothers establish a political weekly, the Examiner.

1809:

John Murray founds the Quarterly Review, with William Gifford as its editor.

1810:

June 27th: Keats' mother dies of tuberculosis.

Keats leaves school and is apprenticed to Mr. Hammond, a surgeon.

1813:

February 3rd: The Hunt brothers are convicted of libeling the Prince Regent and are sent off to prison for two years.

News comes to England of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow; and, his struggle to retain hold of central Europe.

Southey becomes Poet Laureate and is so until 1843.

1814:

April: Paris is captured and Bonaparte abdicates.

1815:

February 3rd: The prison terms of both Hunt brothers end.

October; Keats enters Guy's Hospital at London for training; remains there for six months.

March 1st, Napoleon returns from Elba and the "Hundred Days" begin.

June 18th, The Battle of Waterloo.

Unemployed ex-servicemen walk the streets.

1816:

April: Keats leaves Guy's Hospital so to devote his full time to poetry.

December 1st: Hunt writes in his Examiner on "Young Poets," including those now in his circle, Shelley and Keats.

1817:

April-August: Leading the life of a itinerant poet, and, while traveling along the south coast of England, Keats writes Books I and II of Endymion, his first major work.

April 17th: At Isle of Wight. "On the Sea -- It keeps eternal Whisperings around ..."

May 10th: At Margate. Writing to Hunt and Shelley. "Does Shelley go on telling strange Stories of the Death of Kings?"

May 13th: Still at Margate. Writing to Haydon. "I read and write about eight hours a day."

September: Keats spends time with Bailey at Oxford and writes Book III of Endymion.

October 8th: Now at Hampstead.

October: John Gibson Lockhart, then, but age 23, at Edinburgh, with his platform being Blackwood's Magazine, a Tory magazine, fulminates against "The Cockney School of Poetry."

November 22nd: Writes letters to John Reynolds and Benjamin Bailey: "My Brother Tom is much improved -- he is going to Devonshire -- whither I shall follow him."

December, Keats meets Wordsworth for the first time at Haydon's; likely this was on Sunday, the 28th, at one of the most famous dinner party of all times; it was held at Haydon's painting room, at his house in St. John's Wood, then "a bohemian suburb of London."

December 21st: John is writing his brothers who are now located at Teignmouth. John's letter is dated at Hampstead.

1818:

January 5th: John, it is to be seen by his letters, is at London and writing his brothers who are in the south of England, at Teignmouth. Now revising his Endymion. Attends Hazlitt's lectures. He is also getting together with Wordsworth, Lamb, and others.

January 23rd: At London: "I have sent my first book [Endymion] to the Press."

February 21st: Still at London and writes his brothers at Teignmouth.

March: Shelley leaves for Italy.

March 13th: Now at Teignmouth with his brothers.

April 8th: Still at Teignmouth. His brother Tom is getting "greatly better." Now making plans for a pedestrian tour through Scotland.

May 3rd: Still at Teignmouth.

May 25th: Now back at Hampstead. Keats' brother George departs for America.

June 10th: Keats at London

June 27th: Keats now in the north of England, the Lake District.

July 1st: At Carlisle.

July 14th: At Glasgow.

July 18th: At Inverary.

July 26th: "We had a most wretched walk of 37 miles across the Island of Mull."

August 6th: At Inverness and feeling sick.

August 18th: After a nine day sail from Inverness, back at London.

From the correspondence it seems that John was at Hampstead throughout the fall of the year generally nursing his brother Tom who died that December.

1819:

February 14th: "I am still at Wentworth Place -- indeed I have kept in doors lately, resolved if possible to rid myself of my sore throat."

July 1st: By this date at Shanklin, Isle of Wight.

August 14th: Now located at Winchester, he and Brown.

October: Still at Winchester.

November 17th: Writes his publisher from Wentworth Place (Hampstead).

1820:

January 13th: Writing brother George's wife (Georgiana) who is in America. Brother George is in London on a visit.

February 4th: Writing from his sick bed to Fanny Brawne, who is but next door -- Wentworth Place.

February 10th: Writes to Fanny Brawne: "On the night I was taken ill -- when so violent a rush of blood came to my Lungs that I felt nearly suffocated ..."

February, nd: Letter to Fanny Brawne: "I am recommended not even to read poetry, much less write it."

May 4th: Letter to sister Fanny: "I went for the first time into the City the day before yesterday ..."

May: Moves from Wentworth Place to Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town.

June 23rd: Expecting his new book to be out within the week (Lamia, Isabella, etc.). "I set myself to come to town, but was not able for just as I was setting out yesterday morning a slight spitting of blood came on which returned rather copiously at night."

July 5th: Letter to Fanny Brawne: "They talk of my going to Italy."

August: Receives invitation from Shelley to come to Italy.

September 11th: Letter to sister Fanny dated at Hampstead.

September 28th: Letter to Charles Browne. Keats and Severn now aboard the Maria Crowther, "off Yarmouth isle of wight."

October 21st: Arrive at Naples Harbour.

November 30th: Rome. A letter to his friend Charles Browne who is back in England. Anticipates the worst, bids goodbye to all.

1821:

February 23rd: Keats dies in Italy.

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