There are things we think we know about Keats: his horribly early death from tuberculosis, at twenty-five; his unconsummated passion for Fanny Brawne; how he was "destroyed" by conservative critics who couldn't appreciate his work.
There are things we think we know about Keats: his horribly early death from tuberculosis, at twenty-five; his unconsummated passion for Fanny Brawne; how he was \"destroyed\" by conservative critics who couldn't appreciate his work.
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John Keats by Nicholas Roe Yale University Press, £25 Reviewed by Lesley McDowell
His early life is less well-known: the sudden death of his father when he was a boy; his mother's indolence and hasty remarriage, prompting rumours of an affair; the family's social and financial decline.
It's strange this latter information should be so rarely mentioned. Given how fascinating we find Dicken's early life, with a father imprisoned for debt and time spent in a blacking factory, we're attuned to tales of child trauma. We're used, too, to the image of Keats as a fey young man, dandyish and weak; crucial contradictory facts about his early life show a school bully, and a determination to succeed beyond the vocation of apothecary chosen for him by his guardians. This weak man easily walked for miles.
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