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…
“A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no Identity—he is continually in for—and filling some other Body.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
In the pantheon of American Romantic poetry, few figures burn as brightly—or as briefly—as Edward Coote Pinkney. Born into privilege on October 1, 1802, in London, England, and dying in poverty on April 11, 1828, in Baltimore, Maryland, Pinkney's twenty-five years encompassed a lifetime of passion, rebellion, literary brilliance, and ultimately, tragic unfulfillment. His story reads like a cautionary tale of artistic…
“The undersigned informs honorable men that he has found him unpossessed of courage to make satisfaction for the insolence of his folly. Saying thus much, the undersigned commits the craven to his infamy.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder