by John Keats

Born in 1795, John Keats was the eldest son of Thomas Keats, head stableman at a London livery stable, and of Frances Jennings, the stable owner’s daughter. Thomas Keats eventually inherited the prosperous business from his father-in-law. His son John attended Reverend John Clarke’s private school at Enfield, where he was befriended by Charles Cowden Clarke, the headmaster’s son, who encouraged John Keats’s love of reading and later introduced him to the works of great poets. When Keats was eight, his father was killed in a riding accident; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later. The four Keats children became the wards of Richard Abbey, an unscrupulous tea merchant who later embezzled the funds left in trust for the children. Abbey removed John from school at age 15 and apprenticed...