Context: biographical

Question 1

when/ where was Keast born

Answer 1

october 1795 London to Thomas and Frances Keats. He was the eldest if 4 children

Question 2

Thomas Keats: life, occupation, death

Answer 2

managed a stable and had a fairly comfortable income (sufficient to send his three sons to the small village academy). He died in a horse accident in 1804 (when keats was aged 9

Question 3

Frances Keats (Before husbands death)

Answer 3

Keats mother: was devoted i all her children.

Question 4

Frances Keats after husbands death (reaction and remarriage)

Answer 4

-very deep puschoolical impact
-she remarried to a man called William Rawlings a gambler who tricked Frances into giving him the stables and a substantial part
of their inheritance despite her leaving him shortly after their marriage.
Frances left the fmily ut returned in 1808 in very bad physical and mental health and died of TB in 1809

Question 5

keats schooling

Answer 5

Keats went to Enfield Academy when he was eight years old and immediately established warm relationships both with the Headmaster, John Clarke and with his fifteen-year-old son, Charles Cowden Clarke. In a memoir, Cowden Clarke remembered Keats as someone who was very sociable and who stood up for his friends, fighting passionately in their defence

Question 6

who was alice whalley jennings?

Answer 6

Keats Grandmother- in charge of ye 4 children. despite her inheriting a substantial sum of money she made bad economic choices which had serious effects on the family’s finance. As a resukt Keats was obliged to find a career and he became a surgeons apprecitice

Question 7

when and why did Keats chose to be an apprentice surgeon

Answer 7

• between 1811 and 1814

- he lacked financial means and it was considered a respectable profession which didnt require a uni degree

Question 8

How did his time as an apprentice surgeon influence his literary development

Answer 8

During his traing keats became increasingly lonelky and restless and therefore became more relaiant on the Clarkes for intellecual and emotional nourishment- as a result he ‘devored’ texts such as ovids metamorphisis, milons oaradise lost, virgi;s eclogues and spensers the faeire queene

Question 9

Leigh Hunt on first meeting keats

Answer 9

the impression made upon me by the exuberant specimens of genuine though young poetry that were laid before me, and the promise of which was seconded by the fine fervid countenance of the writer. We became intimate on the spot, and I found the young poet’s heart as warm as his imagination.

Question 10

what happened in 1816?

Answer 10

Keats met Leight Hunt (essayist, editor, critic and poet)
Benjamin robert Hayden (artist)
and shellys pubkisher Charles Ollier - who plished keats first volume of verse

Question 11

cowden clarke commenting on Keats and Hunts relation

Answer 11

from that day until the end of his life, Keats was welcomed as a ‘familiar of the [Hunts’] household’ in Hampstead, a world filled with books, paintings, music, liberal politics and opportunities to meet some of the most significant thinkers of the age.

Question 12

What happened afte r Keats moved into 76 cheapside with his brithers george and tom in 1816?

Answer 12

due to his friendship with Hunt Reynolds and Haydon he met other influential people:

1) John Taylor and James Hessey who later oublished his poems
2) Charles Brown- a business man who he travelled with keat on a walking holiday in scotland in 1818
3) oxford student Benjamin Bailey
4) William Hazlitt (radical english writer and lit critic) who is believed to have influence keats’ ideas of art and beauty

Question 13

what happened in 1816

Answer 13

Keats became increasingly disillusioned with his career as a surgeon and decided to completely devote his life to surgery

Question 14

what happened to Keats in 1817

Answer 14

• keats published his first volume of poetry
• keats spent much of his time away from london, staying in Margate and ten ise of Wight and Oxford (with Benjamin Bailey)

Question 15

why was 1817 esepcially importamt for keats

Answer 15

in this period he first began to use letters to convey his deeply thoughtful ideas about poetry, love and philosophy.

Question 16

keats letters

Answer 16

collected and published in 1848 and 1878- now they are almost as jughly regarded as the poems themselves

Question 17

what is negative capabily?

Answer 17

when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason

Question 18

1818

Answer 18

• attended a series of lectures by William Hazlitt
• attened a social gathering referred to as the ‘immoral dinner’ in which Wordsworth refered to Keats’ poetry as nothing more than ‘ a pretty piece if paganism’
• brother george got married and moved to America
• brother tom died
• moved to the brown house and met Fanny Brawne
• went in a walking tour of scotland

Question 19

1819

Answer 19

• became engaged to Fanny Brawne in october
• He worked on Hyperion
• composed eve of st agnes, many of his odes, la belle dame sans merci

Question 20

the reception of Keats first published volume of poetry

Answer 20

We regret that your brother ever requested us to publish his book … By far the greater number of persons who have purchased it from us have found fault with it in such plain terms, that we have in many cases offered to take the book back rather than be annoyed with the ridicule which has, time after time, been showered upon us.

Question 21

Keats’ private unhappiness in 1819

Answer 21

• unhappy relationship with Fanny Brawne as he lacked the financial needs to support a wife
• health deteriorating
• his brother John had severe TB and was very close to death

Question 22

Second Volume of Poetry

Answer 22

• published in 1820

- very good reception but keats was too ill to really take any notice

Question 23

Keats death

Answer 23

• Keats was nursed by the Hunts an dthen Fanny Brawne and her mother
• He moved to italy as a desperate attempt to try and improve his condition- he kleft for rome in 1820
• Keats died 23 February 1821. on his grave was inscribed ‘here lies one whose name was writ in water’. later Severn and Brown added ‘This Grave contains all that was Mortal of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, Who on his Death Bed in the Bitterness of his Heart at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone.’