John Keats

Did you know?

• Before becoming a poet, Keats trained as a surgeon and apothecary. He abandoned medicine at 21, telling a friend that poetry was his true calling.
• He wrote many of his greatest works — including 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' — in a single extraordinary burst of creativity in 1819.
• Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome aged just 25. At his request, his gravestone bears no name, only the inscription: 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water.'
• He fell deeply in love with his neighbour Fanny Brawne, writing her hundreds of passionate letters, but they never married due to his failing health and lack of funds.