John Keats : a life

by Stephen Coote

John Keats is described as the last of the great romantic poets, and his brief life, full of poetry, epitomizes the image of tragic genius. The author here reveals Keats to be a man of his time, rediscovering a poet who reacted strongly against an authoritarian state and tried to find a spiritual life free from the repressive Christianity of 19th-century England. Stephen Coote throws much new light on the poems, showing why they were so bitterly attacked, and reveals Keats as a man of real vitality, profoundly original and deeply human.

Genres: Biography, Poetry, Nonfiction

356 pages, Hardcover

First published March 7, 1996

About the author

Stephen Coote is the author of several acclaimed biographies including Royal Survivor: The Life of Charles II, Samuel Pepys, and John Keats: A Life. He was educated at Magdelene College, Cambridge and at Birkbeck College, University of London. He lives in Oxfordshire, England.

Reviews

[Munderoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

John's life was short, but eventful. Undoubtedly, most of these events were frustrating, horrible and life altering. What he learned from Death and Nature, he gave to us in his wonderful poetry and in his even more beautiful and meaningful letters. And, as Joseph Epstein said, “He died, in other words, out of an act of purely selfless good. He also died in pellucid awareness that his great promise had not come to fruition. What he couldn’t know, of course, was that, in substantial part, it already had […]” This book gives a great overview over this magnificent poet's life and puts emotion before science in the right places. Very good!

[D.W. Pryke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed and readable biography that never gets too literary, but always tries to keep John Keats rooted in the world beyond his small circle of literary and artistic friends. So we learn how the politics of the day, and the how the rules and laws passed by the increasingly authoritarian government of the day affected Keats...how anxious he was that his first published book of Poems should be a success, and how devastated he was when the book did not sell. How he drove himself to exhaustion trying to write the 4000 lines of Endymion, his epic romance he believed would make his name. Through this biography we see the real Keats, the young man, struggling financially, struggling with towering ambition and self doubt that his poetry would ever be remembered, struggling with the young women he was introduced to, and struggling with his family curse - tuberculosis, or consumption as it was known.