On 23 February 1821, John Keats died of tuberculosis in a house beside the Spanish Steps in Rome, aged just 25. As a lover of the Romantic poets and having just published a new biography of William Wordsworth to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth, I decided to spend last year’s lockdown writing about Keats. But I had a problem: there are already half a dozen fine “cradle-to-grave” biographies of him, so we really don’t need another one. What is more, one of them was written by a distinguished American academic called Walter Jackson Bate (no relation, although he did teach me at Harvard). It would have been just too confusing for librarians and readers for me to write an orthodox biography. I needed to find a new way of approaching him.
9:46 AM
Beauty and the Damned
on 23 february 1821, john keats died of tuberculosis in a house beside the spanish steps in rome, aged just 25. as a lover of the romantic p...
Jonathan Bate
8 min read
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