Birth of John Keats

John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 in Moorgate. An English Romantic poet, Keats trained as a surgeon but gave up medicine to write poetry. In a career of only about six years he produced some of the most admired verse in the language, including Endymion, Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes and the great odes, among them Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn and To Autumn. His letters set out the idea of negative capability, the capacity to remain in uncertainty. His work was harshly reviewed in his lifetime. He died of tuberculosis in Rome at the age of twenty-five, and is buried in the Protestant Cemetery there.

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