John Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the first surviving child of Thomas Keats and Frances Jennings Keats. Though later admirers often imagined him as the archetypal fragile Romantic poet, set apart from ordinary life by genius and suffering, his origins were practical, urban, and socially modest. His father managed the Swan and Hoop livery stable at Moorgate, owned by Frances’s father, John Jennings. Ke…
“I mean Negative Capability, that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
In the annals of Victorian literature and art, few figures burn as brightly or as contradictorily as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). Born Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti on May 12, 1828, in London, he would reverse his given names to honor the great Italian poet who profoundly influenced his work and worldview. A man of extraordinary artistic vision who helped revolutionize British poetry and painting, Rossetti em…
“A work of art is beautiful when it expresses the deepest truth of the human soul.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Tenderness, Sorrow