John Keats: Life and Background

Abstract

John Keats’s origins were lowly, though not as abject as was made out later in his life by critics trying to consign him to the ‘Cockney school of poetry’. His father was head ostler at a London inn, a promotion he probably gained on marrying Keats’s mother, whose father held the lease of the inn. John, born on 31 October 1795, was the first of five children (one died in infancy), and developed strong relationships with his brothers George and Tom and, to a lesser extent, with his young sister Fanny. His parents were affluent enough to send himself and George to the private school of John Clarke in Enfield, a more enlightened institution than its counterparts, Dothe-boys Hall or Mr Creakle’s Establishment, in Charles Dickens’s novels. Here Keats benefited not only from the liberal atmosphere which encouraged independence of character, but from his friendship with the headmaster’s son, Charles Cowden Clarke, eight years his senior, who guided his taste in reading and provided him with the all-important introduction to the literary circle of James Henry Leigh Hunt.