Resurrecting John Keats

John Keats wrote to his brother on October 14, 1818, “I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.” Those prophetic words have come true, though when written in late 1818 the English literary establishment would have laughed at such a possibility. John Keats was not successful in his lifetime. While published by the radical pamphleteer Leigh Hunt, Keats fell outside the English literary mainstream which mocked his writings. Keats, as we know, died at the tender young age of 25 in Rome from tuberculosis. A few decades after his death, however, the apotheosis of Keats began, and he is now regarded as one of the greatest English Romantic poets and among my own personal favorites.