John Keats Notebook

John Keats in oil by William Hamilton (c.1822). John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet prominent in the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, although his poems had been published for only four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century he was placed in the canon of English literature and had become an inspiration for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, strongly influencing many writers; the Encyclopædia Britannica called one ode "one of the final masterpieces". Jorge Luis Borges named his first encounter with Keats an experience that he felt all his life. Keats had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in the series of odes. Typical of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion by emphasising natural imagery. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature. Especially acclaimed are "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Sleep and Poetry" and the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".