Jane- In Memoriam - John Keats

On the twenty third of February this year it will be two hundred years since the death of our treasured poet John Keats 1795-1821. A short life being eclipsed by tuberculosis at the age of only twenty six.

He had abandoned his career in medicine for the more turbulent life of a Romantic poet. Immersing himself in the society of free thinkers and liberalism he wrote poems of extreme emotion through an emphasis on natural imagery.

Despite being acknowledged and befriended by Shelley, Byron and Hunt who regarded him as a master of his craft his writing was not well received by the general public. This sense of rejection could well explain why his self-penned epitaph reads 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'. Or was it from the pen of a man too conscious of his own mortality.

It was not until after his death in fact well into the 19th Century that we took him to our English hearts. Now, two hundred years on he has become one of our most frequently read English Romantic Poets.

Lucasta Miller, respected for her literary journalism, has selected just nine of Keats poems for her new Meta biography Keats: A Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph published this month.

Sometimes a more 'restrained' approach to biographical writing says more than one thrown open to all aspects. This book has a charm perhaps because of this approach.

One feels that any author in the hands of Miller will be given life and here with Keats she has excelled.

I recommend that you snuggle up with this book and enjoy its wonderful insight into the life and poetry of John Keats.

Request a copy here.