Monday 31 October 2016

JOHN KEATS, THE POET OF BEAUTY

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John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 in Moorgate, London, England, the first child born to Frances Jennings and Thomas Keats. After leaving school in Enfield, Keats went on to apprentice with Dr. Hammond, a surgeon in Edmonton. After his father died in a riding accident, and his mother died of tuberculosis, John and his brothers moved to Hampstead. It was here that Keats met Charles Armitage Brown (1787-1842) who would become a great friend. Remembering his first meeting with him, Brown writes "His full fine eyes were lustrously intellectual, and beaming (at that time!)". Much grieved by his death, Brown worked for many years on his biography, Life of John Keats (1841). In it Brown claims that it was not until Keats read Edmund Spencer's Faery Queen that he realised his own gift for the poetic. Keats was an avid student in the fields of medicine and natural history, but he then turned his attentions to the literary works of such authors as William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer. Continue reading here.

Here you can find a summary and an analysis of John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale". 


Tuesday 18 October 2016

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY


A major figure among the English Romantic poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley led an unconventional life and died tragically young.

He was born on 4 August 1792 near Horsham in Sussex. His father was a member of parliament. Shelley was educated at Eton and at Oxford University. There he began to read radical writers such as Tom Paine and William Godwin. In 1811, he was expelled for his contribution to a pamphlet supporting atheism.  Continue reading here.


Saturday 1 October 2016