| Publication details of 'Ode to Autumn': | Published in Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems (1820) |
| Other literary works include: | Poems (1817) Endymion (1818) The Annus Mirabilis (1819) |
| Born: | 31st of October, 1795, in London. |
| Early years: | Details of Keats's early life are scarce. He was the oldest of four children. He received relatively little formal education. He lost his parents at an early age. |
| Schooling: | Keats attended the Clarke school at Enfield. |
| Career: | After his mother's death in 1810 his grandmother put Keats's affairs into the hands of a guardian, Richard Abbey. At Abbey's instigation Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton in 1811. He broke off his apprenticeship in 1814 and went to live in London, where he worked as a house surgeon, at Guy's and St. Thomas' hospitals. In 1816 he became a licensed druggist, but never practiced his profession, deciding instead to be a poet. |
| Final years: | In July 1820, the third and best of his volumes of poetry Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems was published. The volume also contained the unfinished poem Hyperion. In 1820 he left for Italy because he was developing consumption (he contracted tuberculosis, probably from nursing his brother, Tom, who died in 1818.) He was not allowed to write poetry and was only given the dullest books to read, as emotional excitement was considered bad for consumptive patients. He stopped opening letters and tried to commit suicide. |
| Died: | He died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, on 23rd February, 1821 in Rome. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery there. |
| Keats-related web-sites: | john-keats.com | Keats, His Life and Poetry | John Keats[The British Library] |