John Keats' (born in London on October 31, 1795) difficult childhood included the loss of both parents-his father in a riding accident and his mother from tuberculosis-within six years of the other when Keats was eight and fourteen. John and his brother George were sent to boarding school at Enfield, a village ten miles north of the city. At age fourteen and a half, he took an apprenticeship with an apothecary.

After five years of apprenticeship, John Keats enrolled as a student in Guys Hospital in London. Keats started to write and on May 1st, 1816, one of his earliest surviving poems, "To Solitude" was published in The Examiner, a weekly liberal newspaper. After one year at Guys Hospital, he passed an apothecary examination, but he never pursued a career in medicine, having decided to become a poet, 

In 1817, he published his first volume Poems, but the book barely sold. Encouraged by his brothers and the publisher of Poems, Keats journeyed to the Isle of Wight, to have the solitude needed for writing. However, the solitude of the isle did not encourage his endeavors and he soon left, feeling like a failure. Despite this setback, he continued writing. The year 1817 marked a period of extraordinary growth for the poet, who wrote and published Endymion-though it was highly criticized by conservatives. 

In 1818, Keats toured Scotland, hiking from town to town, averaging about twenty miles per day. His month-long hike through the country is often perceived as preparation for his epic intentions of "Hyperion" (published as "The fall of Hyperion, A Dream"). Indeed, the only books Keats brought with him were three translations of Dante's Inferno. In the last stages of his journey, Keats climbed Ben Nevis, Britain's highest peak. His journey through Scotland was cut short by a sore throat that prevented him from traveling farther than Inverness. 

In the fall of 1818, Keats began composing "Hyperion". However the death of his brother from tuberculosis, greatly upset Keats, who moved to Hampstead to live with a friend in Wentworth Place. At this time, he experienced his most productive year as a writer, penning some of his most famous works, including the odes "To a Nightingale," "On a Grecian Urn," and "On Melancholy." John Keats also met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne. However, he soon developed a severe hemorrhage, indicating the later stages of tuberculosis and Keats ended his engagement to Fanny Brawne, knowing that he would not survive the illness. His final volume of poetry, entitled Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems was published in July 1820. At his doctor's recommendation, he sailed to the warmer climate of Naples, Italy in September. The following month, Keats moved to Rome and established a temporary residence in the Piazza di Spagna. Though the milder climate may have improved the poet's health, the change was only temporary, and John Keats died on February 23, 1821 at the age of twenty-five.

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John Keats and the Casina Rosa

February 4, 2007

The "Casina Rossa" or "Little Red House" sits next to the Spanish Steps in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome. An unprepossessing building built in 1725, it blends in with the neighboring three and four story buildings surrounding the piazza. The Casina Rossa is not renowned for its distinctive architecture, but instead for its many distinguished occupants, the most famous of whom was John Keats, the great English Romantic poet.