Famous Americans

How illness, criticism, and creativity shaped his work.

John Keats lived just 25 years, published only a small body of work, and spent much of his short life convinced that his poems would not last. He wrote during an era of disease, strict social class boundaries, and ruthless literary criticism, all while struggling with poverty and failing health. His story is not one of instant fame or easy success but of persistence, loss, and a fierce belief that poetry mattered even when the world seemed determined to prove otherwise.

Early Life

John Keats was born in London, England, on October 31, 1795. It was a time of enormous social change in England. The Industrial Revolution was reshaping cities, science was advancing quickly, and literature was beginning to push back against cold logic by emphasizing emotion, imagination, and beauty. This cultural movement became known as Romanticism, and Keats would eventually stand among its most important voices.

Keats did not grow up wealthy or privileged. His father managed a livery stable, and the family lived a modest but comfortable life until tragedy struck early. Keats’ father died when John was eight, and his mother passed of tuberculosis six years later. Scholars often note that Keats’s early exposure to illness and death shaped the way he wrote about fragility, time, and impermanence later in life.

Despite his difficult childhood, Keats received a solid education at Enfield School, where he discovered a passion for reading. He devoured classical mythology, Shakespeare, and Renaissance poetry. His schoolmaster encouraged independent thinking, which helped Keats develop a literary curiosity that went far beyond memorization or imitation. At the same time, poetry was not considered a practical career for someone of his background. As a result, Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon and later studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital in London.

John Keats – The Poet

While training in medicine, Keats continued to write poetry at night. By 1816, he made the risky decision to abandon medicine entirely and dedicate himself to writing.

Early in his career, John Keats faced very harsh criticism. In 1817 and 1818, powerful magazines such as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and the Quarterly Review published negative reviews of his poetry. The critics said Keats and his friends were poorly educated and did not belong in serious literature.

One magazine mocked them as part of the “Cockney School of Poetry,” a mean label meant to insult poets from London and suggest they lacked proper training. These reviewers disliked new writing styles and preferred older, more traditional poetry. The attacks upset Keats deeply, and at times he even thought about giving up poetry. Still, he kept writing, and during the years after these reviews, he created many of the poems that later made him famous.

Between 1818 and 1819, he wrote the poems that would later secure his reputation. During this brief but intense period, he composed works such as Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and To Autumn. These poems explore how beauty can feel eternal even when human life is painfully short. In Ode on a Grecian Urn, Keats reflects on art’s ability to freeze a moment in time, writing:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Keats’ thinking about poetry is also preserved in his letters, which scholars study almost as closely as his poems.

Many of Keats’ poems openly confront his fear of dying young. In the sonnet When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be, written in 1818, he expresses anxiety about running out of time before achieving artistic greatness or lasting love:

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

The poem captures both ambition and vulnerability in language that remains accessible to modern readers.

Keats’ personal life was deeply affected by illness and love. He fell in love with Fanny Brawne, but his worsening tuberculosis and lack of financial stability made marriage impossible. In 1820, doctors advised him to seek warmer air, and he traveled to Italy. His health continued to decline, and he died in Rome the following year. At his request, his gravestone reads, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” reflecting his fear that his work would be forgotten.

History proved Keats wrong. His reputation grew steadily after his death, and by the late nineteenth century he was widely recognized as one of England’s greatest poets. He is known as being one of the influential poets in Romanticism. Today, his work is taught around the world. Keats’ life shows how creative courage can outlast criticism and how a short life can leave a long literary legacy.

1. John Keats is known as being one of the influential poets in Romanticism.
2. Keats apprenticed to become a surgeon but quit to pursue his poetry career.
3. Keats died at just 25 years old, but he is still one of the most read and taught poets.