Bright Star tells the story of the love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawne with a classical poise, exquisite craftsmanship and a piercing tenderness. It is Jane Campion’s most fully realised, satisfying achievement in a long while. Read here.
John Keats
was born in 1795 to a lower-middle-class
family in London. When he was still young, he lost both his parents. His
mother died of tuberculosis, the disease that eventually killed Keats
himself.
He was well
educated at a private school in Enfield, where his schoolmaster encouraged him
to read and write. In 1810, after leaving school, he was apprenticed to an
apothecary-surgeon but he remained a passionate reader.
In 1815 he left his apprenticeship and
became a student at Guy's Hospital, London. However, in 1816 he abandoned
the profession of medicine for poetry. Keats's first volume of poems was
published in 1817 and was not entirely well received.
In the summer of 1818, Keats toured the
north of England and Scotland, returning home to nurse his brother Tom, who had fallen ill with tuberculosis. After Tom’s death, in December, he moved into a friend’s house in Hampstead,
London, now known as Keats House.
