1. John Keats (1795-1821) Son of a livery-stable keeper, eldest of five. Father dies when Keats is 9; mother at 14 of TB. Apprenticed to a surgeon; licensed as apothecary. 1817: gives up medicine for poetry. Close friend of Leigh Hunt, editor of The Examiner who publishes Keats Poems. Dubbed “the Cockney Poet” by Tories.

2. Keats 1817: Writes Edymion 1818: Miltonic epic Hyperion. His brother Tom dies of TB. 1819: “Eve of St Agnes”; “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”; “Lamia”; all the Great Odes, several sonnets.

3. 1819: Keats meets and falls in love Fanny Brawne. 1820: Suffers his first major bout of TB. Asks that the words “Here lies one whose name was writ in water” to be inscribed as his epitaph. 1821: dies in Italy at the age of 25.

4. Drawing of Sosibios Vase by Keats