The oldest of four children, he lost both his parents at a young age.

After his mother's death, Keats's maternal grandmother appointed two London merchants, Richard Abbey and John Rowland Sandell, as guardians. Abbey, a prosperous tea broker, assumed the bulk of this responsibility, while Sandell played only a minor role. When Keats was fifteen, Abbey withdrew him from the Clarke School, Enfield, to apprentice with an apothecary-surgeon and study medicine in a London hospital.

John Keatss Mother

1 Character Of Charles Brown2 Calidore: A Fragment3 Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art4 Bright Star5 Ben Nevis: A Dialogue6 Bards of Passion and of Mirth, written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-Comedy 'The Fair Maid of the Inn'7 Asleep! O Sleep A Little While, White Pearl!8 Apollo And The Graces9 Answer To A Sonnet By J.H.Reynolds10 An Extempore11 Addressed To Haydon12 Acrostic : Georgiana Augusta Keats13 A Thing of Beauty (Endymion)14 A Song About Myself15 A Prophecy: To George Keats In America16 A Party Of Lovers17 A Galloway Song18 A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode Of Paolo And Francesca19 A Draught Of Sunshine

Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance. Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever Addressed to Haydon After Reading Dante's Episode of Paolo and Francesca, A Dream Answer to a Sonnet by J.H.Reynolds, Ending Calidore Endymion Epistle to my Brother George Fancy READ ONLINE BUY ON AMAZON Happy is England! I Could Be Content His Last Sonnet

Keats's House in Rome

Wentworth Place, now the Keats House museum (left), The Keats public library (right)

John Keats died on 23 February 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request was to be placed under an unnamed tombstone which contained only the words (in pentameter), "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Severn and Brown erected the stone, which under a relief of a lyre with broken strings, contains 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: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821"

Keats's grave in Rome