John Keat- Interesting Facts

Retrieved from: http://www.keatsian.co.uk/john-keats-biography.htm

John Keats Biography
This John Keats biography was written by Kelly Starr and edited by Juliette Pye.
In this section of the website we delve into the life of John Keats and try to understand why and how this great poet ROCKS!
Keats has been hailed as the archetype of the Romantic poet as he lived and died in true Romantic style, trying to experience everything, suffering for his art and dying young.
Keats life was filled with tragedy from a young age and plagued his short life; all this experience and emotion can be seen in his poetry. I hope for this biography to be helpful to all who view it and that it helps give Keats readers some contextual and trivial facts that they can then go on to apply to his fantasmagorical (Jo's word) poetry.

John Keats was born in October 31st 1795 (it was considered most probable to be the 31st as Keats never admitted his date of birth; he hated celebrating it each year) in London. He was the son of Thomas Keats, a livery worker, and Frances Jennings Keats, the eldest of four children. The story of how Keats' parents got together is an interesting one for it is believed that Frances Jennings eloped with Thomas Keats. She was the daughter of Thomas Keats' employer and they ran away; luckily In 1804 his father was killed in a work related accident her parents had a forgivable nature and accepted the marriage and let John Keats keep his job as a livery worker.
Family life was quite normal; the Keats had three more sons George, Thomas and Edward (who died in infancy) and one daughter called Frances. In 1803 Keats went away to a school in Enfield called John Clarke's.; he fell from a horse. Two months after her husband's death, Frances Keats remarried a London bank clerk called William Rawlings, although this action she quickly regretted and left taking nothing with her because by law everything now belonged to her new husband; even her children. Luckily for...