John Keats, was born in London on October 31 1795, he was the eldest of  four children. Although he died at the age of 25, he had one of the most remarkable career of all the English poets. He devoted his brief life to refining and perfecting poetry, characterised by vivid imagery and tremendous sensuous appeal.
John received relatively little formal education. Following the tragic death of his father in 1804 due to a riding accident, his mother soon remaried, consequently Keats and his two brothers and sister, to which the poet would have strong emotional ties for the entirity of his life, were sent to live with their grandmother. He was sent to study at a neraby school in Enfield, Keats was noted for being a bellicose lad but decidedly not a literary student but in 1809 he started to read voraciously. Following his mother’s death due to tuberculosis in 1810, the childrens grandmother put their affairs in the hands of a guardian Richard Abbey. In 1811 Mr Abbey encoraged young Keats to become an apprentice to a surgeon at Edmonton, but in 1814 he broke off his apprentiship and went to live in London, where he found employment as a junior surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals. During this period his literary intrests developed further and in 1817 he entirely devoted himself to his poetry. From this moment onwards to his premature death, the story of his life is the narrative of the poetry that he wrote. Some of the most renowned works of the poet include: “The Eve of  S. Agnes“, “Ode On a Grecian Urn” and the ballad “La Belle Dam Sans Merci“. The poet  died of tuberculosis in Rome where he is burried in February 1821 at the age of 25. During the course of his life, Keats was little outside of literary circle and even here he was to a certain extent diregarded because his works were considered to be full of neglect and obscurity. Fortunately in Victorian times owing to the renowned critic Mathew Arnold there was a total reversal of judgment.