by Ian Reynolds   John Keats died in Rome aged twenty-five on February 23rd, 1821 and is buried at the Cemitero Acattolico—the so-called Protestant Cemetery in Rome (1). Two years later, in the early spring of 1823 his gravestone with epitaph was finally laid at his burial site. (2) Much has been documented about Keats’s […]

by Ellen O’Neill October 21 is a fateful date for John Keats and myself: he landed in Italy in 1820 in a last-ditched effort to find relief in the warmth of the Italian sun to cure his diseased body, and I landed on the earth (as did Coleridge). Oh, the streets of Rome are filled […]

by Suzie Grogan John Keats has been viewed by many as the very picture of the romantic poet, destined to die poor and at a young age. He was a man who attracted a devoted group of friends who in many ways promoted that image after his death, at the age of 25, from tuberculosis. […]

by Andrew McConnell Stott Cartoon by Mike Barfield The most notable meal in the history of English Romantic poetry took place on a Sunday afternoon in late December, 1817, as a garrulous group of men assembled at the London home of the artist, Benjamin Robert Haydon. The guests included William Wordsworth, the essayist Charles Lamb, […]

by Colin Silver  On Monday, 14 April 1817, John Keats took hold of his luggage and climbed aboard a coach from London to Southampton. His destination was the Isle of Wight, and his desire was to work without distraction on his new poem, Endymion (the famous first line, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy […]

by Suzie Grogan ‘The psychotherapist’s capacity to be with uncertainty is a defining but unsung feature of the profession….’ Diana Voller Sound familiar? As someone who finds the letters written by John Keats as fascinating and enlightening as his poetry, I recognised that Voller (a London-based counselling psychologist) is drawing on Keats’s views on ‘negative […]

by Lucy Tutton It was in December 1817, in a letter to his brothers, that we see John Keats first use the term Negative Capability. He set out what he believed was necessary to become what he called a “Man of Achievement” or one who is “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries and doubts without […]