20 MAYFAIRTIMES.CO.UK
LITERARY FESTIVAL
THE JOSEPHINE HART POETRY HOUR:
KEATS, SHELLEY AND BYRON
Tuesday October 29, 6.30-8.45pm
The May Fair hotel, Stratton Street
THE GREAT ROMANTICS
Keats, Shelley and Byron all died young
and within three years of each other
By Shevaun Wilder
JOHN KEATS
(1795-1821)
When Keats was just 10 years old, his
father died and his mother remarried within
weeks. She left her new husband shortly
afterwards and died of tuberculosis in 1810.
Thereafter, Keats became a savage
playground fighter. He fell passionately in
love with, and was loved by, Fanny Brawne,
but sadly, for fear of infecting her with TB,
their relationship remained unconsummated.
Keats explored death and haunted beauty
in La Belle Dame Sans Merci and When I
Have Fears That I May Cease To Be.
When Endymion was published in 1818
he was devastated when the critic Lockhart
mocked him as the “Cockney poet”.
Nonetheless, he wrote his great odes at this
time.
Seriously ill, and to escape another English
winter, he set sail for Italy in September 1821
and died in Rome, aged 25.
His gravestone there reads, “This grave
contains all that was mortal of a young
English poet who on his death bed... desired
these words to be engraved on his tombstone:
‘Here lies one whose name was writ in
water.’”
History has proved otherwise.