Keats
Keats names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Keats keets, John, (1795-1821)
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
keets, John, (1795-1821), an English poet. He was the son of a London stablekeeper, but was early left an orphan. He was educated as a physician, but, beyond practice in a London hospital, gave himself up to writing poetry. He suffered from consumption. In 1820 he went to Italy for his health. He died at the age of twenty-five. It is said that bitter, uncalled for criticisms in the reviews of the day hastened his death. During his lifetime he was closely associated with the poet Shelley, whose Adonais, written in memory of Keats, ranks as an elegy with Milton's Lycidas. It may be regarded as Keats' monument. Keats and Shelley lie together in the Protestant burying ground in Rome. In his Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics Palgrave finds room for thirteen of Keats' shorter poems. Keats' longer poems are Endymion, Hyperion, and Lamia. The more noted of his shorter productions are Ode to a Nightingale, and Ode to a Grecian Urn. Although Keats is not the poet of young people, his Eve of St. Agnes, founded on an old Scotch superstition, is not difficult. It is certainly one of the most perfect poems in the English language. Keats' oft quoted sentence, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," is found in his Endymion. No poet who has done so little, bears a higher fame.--Mrs. Oliphant. No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perfection of loveliness.--Matthew Arnold.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN, an English poet; born ; was in London, England, Oct. 29, 1795 apprenticed to a surgeon, but gave way to the ambition of becoming a poet. His first poems published in 1817 made no impression. "Endymion" (1818) and though "Lamia" (1820) brought fame, savagely treated by Clifford in the already at- "Quarterly Review." Keats, tacked by tuberculosis, sought to regain strength in Italy and died in Rome, Feb. 23, 1821.
Keats with his love of beauty as yet passionate and unrestrained
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
with his love of beauty as yet passionate and unrestrained, delighting chiefly in the graceful flow and music of sweet words, has given us verse which sometimes cloys.--Pancoast.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The facts of Keats's short life are still as Aiton's and Collier's give them, but two of their claims have not survived. The story that "bitter, uncalled for criticisms in the reviews of the day hastened his death" — pushed hardest by Byron and Shelley — is now treated as a literary legend: Keats died of tuberculosis, the disease that had already killed his mother and his brother Tom, and he reacted to the hostile notices of "Endymion" with more composure than his friends did. Nor was he "closely associated with the poet Shelley"; the two met only a handful of times and Keats deliberately kept his distance. The bigger shift is in standing: where Aiton's warned he "is not the poet of young people" and quoted Pancoast on verse that "sometimes cloys", the 1819 odes are now core school and university reading, and his letters — with their idea of "negative capability" — are ranked among the finest in English, a body of work barely mentioned in either account. His Hampstead house has been a public museum since 1925.
Written for this edition, 2026.