Romanticism in English literature

English literature

Lecture 1

Romanticism in English literature

Romanticism or The Romantic period.

Romanticism was the artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It was at its peak approximately from 1800 to 1900. During this period much of Europe including England and America experienced a great rise in political, economic and philosophical systems. Revolutionary attitude crashed across the Old World and a new literature appeared. During the early 1800s the situation in France dominates England’s foreign policy. The French revolution that had begun in 1798 was a protest against Royal despotism. At the beginning the French revolution was a great hope for common people. A lot of Europeans felt sympathy for the democratic ideals of the revolution, but when the revolutionary government in France achieved power it began to act with brutality and violence. The massacres of nobility the execution of king Luis 16 and his wife Mary and Antoinette killing of thousands of people during the reign of terror under Robespierre took place it made English people feel far less sympathy for the French revolution. Moreover in 1793 revolutionary France declared war on England, which continued until 1815. In 1804 Napoleon the emperor of France and N. was began the British fought N. on land and sea. Admiral Horatio Nelson became a British national hero after he had destroyed the French fled at the battle of Trafalgar at 1805 off the coast of Spain. Napoleon’s army was finely defeated at the battle of Waterloo at 1815. After that France returned to its pre-revolutionary condition and the hopes of democratic idealists were crashed. In this period of conflict with France, England had severe domestic political problems. George 4 was crowed in 1820 and he was quite intolerant of the liberal freedom. Workers could not form the organizations trade unions were illegal. In 1830 George 4 died and he was succeeded by his more liberal brother William 4. In 1832 parliaments fast the historic First reformed Bill which gave the right to vote to the newly well-to-do middle class, but workers still couldn’t work. In the 19 century Britain became a large trading empire the cities grew fast. Britain was called the workshop of the world. At that time the country went through the so-called Industrial revolution when new industries and processism appeared. The export of finished goods rather than raw material increased. Coal and Iron industries developed. The population increased from 7 to 14 million people. Much money was invested in road and canal building. The fast railway was launched from Liverpool to Manchester and it allowed people to discover the beauty all over country. The industrial revolution began with the invention of a weaving-machine which could do the work of 17 people. The weavers who were left without work thought that the machines were to blame for their misery. They began to destroy this machines or frames as they called them the frame-breaking movement was called the Luddite Movement, because the name of the fast man to brake a frame was Ned Ludd.

It was during those years that the correspondents’ societies were found it in England. They got the name from the fact that their members corresponded with the Jacobin Club in France. Jacobin was the name of extremely democratic club established in Paris in 1798. The societies were organized in different regions in England. The United treats men of different professions and interests as a rule the societies were headed I well-known progressive people who struggled for inclement in the social order. The reactionary ruling class in England was however against any progressive thought. The last decade of the 18th century is known as the white terror. Progressive-minded people were persecuted and forced into exile like Thomas Paine the author of the Rights of men who had to flee to France.

The R. Movement was strongest in England and Germany, not the countries of the romance languages themselves. The Romantic period in England is conceded to begin in 1798 of the 1 edition of lyrical ballads by Wordsworth anв Coleridge and ending in 1832 the year which marked the death of Sir Walter Scott and Goethe. However as an international movement which affected all the arts Romanticism begins at list in the 1770s and continues into the 2 half on the 19th century. Later for America literature than for European and later in some arts like music and painting. It was a time of a new revolutionary energy which transformed the theory and practice of poetry and all arts and the very way we perceive the world. Some of its major ideas have survived into the 20 century and still affect our contemporary period.

In England the Romantic authors were individuals with many contrary views, but all of them were against immoral luxuries of the world injustice and inequality of the society against suffering and human selfishness. The Romantic writers of England did not called themselves romanticist like their French and German contemporaries. But they all depicted the interdependent of Man and nature. On the other hand they were stirred by the suffering which they witnessed in their life. They hoped to find a way of changing the social order by their writing but we can’t treat all the romantics of England as belonging to the same literary school.

William Blake (1757 - 1827) was bitterly disappointed by the down fall of the French Revolution. His young contemporaries Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth were warm admirers of the French revolutions. They both escaped from the evils of the big cities and settled and quietness of the country life in the purity of the nature among unsophisticated country folk. They were known as the Lakists because they lead in the Lake Country or Lake District.

The late romantics George Byron (1788 - 1824), Percy Shelley (1792 - 1822) and John Keats (1795 - 1821) they were young rebels and reflected the interests

That is why the romantic period can be divided into 3 periods:

1. The Early Romantics.

2. The Lakists.

3. The Later Romantics.

Lecture 2

Early Romanticism. “The Lake School.”

Romanticism is associated with the name of William Blake (1757-1827). He was an English poet. He was unrecognized during his life time, but he was one of the most creative minds, how his generation. He predated the High point of English Romanticism by several decades. His greatest works were composed during the 1790s at the time of French revolution. In his works Blake builds up a sort of personal mythology. The Bible was his source material. He transformed the biblical stories and composed entirely original works misunderstood by his contemporaries. His best book “Songs of Innocence” appeared in 1789. It was written from the child’s point of view. It included such poems as “Little Boy Lost”, “Little Boy Found”, “The Lamb” etc. His second “Songs of Experience” appeared in 1794, if contains poems in response to the previous book. It’s suggested ironic contrasts as the child matures and learns about such thing as fear and envy. For example in contrast to “the Lamb” comes “The Tiger”. “The Songs” both of them show the contrasts of life of dream and reality. The Summit of B’s creative works were “Prophetic Book” (пророчество книги) at which he was working in late 18th century and early 19th. The Prophetic Books include a number of poems such as “The Book of Thel” (1789), “the Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1790), “The French revolution”(1791), “Visions of the daughters of Albion” (1793), “Europe: a Prophecy”, “Jerusalem”(1804), “Milton”(). Prophetic were lyrical philosophical poems which described the problem of a future well and mankind. There the author expressed his political viewers his romantic ideals. His picks about historical importance of the French revolution criticize the power of money and Different forms of organized religion and in fact he was against all of it. It is hard to classified Blake’s works in one genre, but he strongly influenced the romantic poets and gave them the themes of good and evil, Heaven and hell, knowledge and innocence, external reality and inner world. He went against common conventions of his time, believed in class and racial equality and justice for everybody rejected oppression in all forms. There are no individual images in Blake’s works, no description of definite place or people. The poet created mythic creatures, fantastic scenes, general symbols, using biblical motives, Greek and Rome mythology, English Folklore. He created “The Great Red Dragon” (Satan), “Los” who represents poetic imagination, Albion, who represents in England, Orc embodies youthful rebelliousness (непокорность). Some peculiar features in England can be found in Blake’s works. It is combination of irony and pathetic element, satire and lyricism.

“The Lake School”

The second period of English К is associated with the name of William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Robert Southey (1774-1843)

They are known as lake poets, because they lived in the Lake District north England in Cumberland. The Lake School was the first used derogatorily by Francis Jeffrey in “the Edinburgh review” in 1817. This name was also used by Lord Byron in the similar meaning. Later other literary critics began to use this name and we also use it nowadays. William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who with Samuel Coleridge helped to launched the romantic age in Britain in English l. The romantic period began in 1798 with the publication of the first edition of “lyrical ballads”. Wordsworth wrote the “Prelude” to the ballads a semiautobiographical poem as his early years in which he revised and expanded several time. At forms he was known the poem “to Coleridge”. Wordsworth was born on the 7 April 1717 in Wordsworth House in Cumberland. He had 4 siblings (братья сестры). Their father was a legal representative of rich man and leaved in large mansion in a small town. The children didn’t see him very often. Although rarely present he taught his son William poetry including Milton, Shakespeare. Spenser. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in “the European magazine”. The same year he began attending Saint John’s College and received his B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) in 1791. He spent his summer holidays on walking tours visiting places famous for the beauty of landscape. In 1790 he took a working tour of Europe spend much time in the Alps and visited nearby countries such as France, Sutherland and Italy. His “preface to lyrical ballads” (1798), he called the “manifesto of English romanticism”. Wordsworth calls his poems in this book “experimental”. In1793 he published his 1st poetry in the collections and “An Evening walk” and “descriptive Sketches” in 1795 he met Coleridge and they became close friends. Together they produced lyrical ballads in 1798 and they were published anonymously. W’s most famous poems “Lions” a few miles above “Tintern Abbey” and Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” were included into the ballads. The second edition of “lyrical ballads” in 1800 had only Wordsworth named as the author. In the “Preface” Wordsworth disused a new type of poetry based on the “real language of men”. New poetry Sais should include the description of real life, given in the light of poetical imagination, which draws ordinary things in an unusual perspective. The poet should pay attention to rural life, where people’s passion their “life of heart” can be observed most clearly. In the “Preface” he gives his famous definition of poetry as “the spontaneous over of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. In 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge travelled to Germany were Wordsworth began to work on an autobiographical piece later named as “The Prelude” the poem describes his use events of the French revolution witnessed. He wrote a number of famous poems including the “The Lucy poems”, which described a poetic love to a girl. The hero is longing for his beloved, who is already dead. He knows about it he can see that the moonlight has gone. Lucy is a symbol of the beauty of nature. Her death means blending with nature. The image of Lucy is a symbol of a distant motherland. The main things of the poems of this period are death, endurance, separation, grief. For many years Wordsworth had been making plans to write a philosophical in 3 parts “The Recluse”. (отшельник). In 1804 he made a prologue as the second part of the poem. The 1st and the 3d parts were never published. In the prologue he speaks about the intend of the poem. It contains some lines about the relation between the human mind and nature. “The individual mind is fitted to the external World, but at the same time the external World is fitted to the mind”.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Robert Southey (1774-1843)

Samuel Coleridge was an English poet literary critic, and pfilosopher. He belong to the lake school. His works include “poems on various subjects” (1796), “the rime of the ancient mariner” (1798), “Kubla Khan”(1797-98) so called conversation poems:

1. “The Eolian Harp” (1795)

2. “Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement” (1795)

3. “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” (1797)

4. “Frost at midnight” (1798),

5. “Fears in Solitude”(1798)

6. “The Nightingale. A conversation poem” (1798)

7. “Dejection An Ode” (1802)

8. “To William WordsWorth”

His major work is “Biographia Literaria” which was written, rediscovery. His religious cross includes “aids to reflection “Church and state”. His critical work especially on Shakspear was highly influencion anphilisophy he helped to introduce Germany idealist to English speaking cultured. He suffered from anxiety and depression which might have been the result of rheumatic hero of his child. He was treated with opium and later it caused a lifelong addiction. Coleridge was born an Ottery saint Marry, Devonsire, he was the youngest son of the vicar, of saint Marry church. His father die when Samuel was 8 years old. The boy was sent to a charity school in London where he studied and wrote poetry. Later he recollected his school days in Biographia Literaria. He was seldom allowed to return home during the school term and he was often homesick. Later he wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem “Frost midnight. With unclose lids, already had I dreamt of my sweet birthplace.” From 1791 to 1794 he attended Jesus College, Cambridge. But he never got a university degree. At the university Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas. Which were ready at that time. He joined Robert S. in his plan to found a utopian, commune like society, Pantisocracy in Pensylvania. But very soon they gave up the idea. The years 1797 and 1798 were among most fruitful in Coleridges life. He lived in Coleridge Cottege in Somerset and got a// with William wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. At this time Coleridge composed “the rime of the ancient mariner” the symbolic poem “Kubla Khan” the Monad emperor. This poem full of mystic visions. During this period he also produced his much-praised conversation poems. The term conversation a poem was coined was invented by George McLean Harper in 1928, who borrowed the subtitle of the poem “the Nightengale”. The poems are considered, by many critics finest verses, the poems are written in blank verse and it is more fluent and easy then Milton’s. The language many considered as merely talk with a lot of idiomatic expressions. “The last ten lines” of “frost of midnight” sound like a sonnet. The speaker of a poem a dressing his infant son, asleep by his side. The speaker begins with a description of a landscape, the change of a landscape shows the change in the authors thoughts, feelings, processes of memory. The lyric speaker comes to a morrow decision, solves an emotional problem. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. It is the longest poem by Coleridge and it was written in 1797-1798. It was published in 1798 in the first edition of “lyrical ballads”. Along with other poems in lyrical ballads it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British romantic literature. The poem tells about the experiences of a sailor. Who has returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man a Wedding-Guest and begings to narrate a story. The story describes the ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south and soon reaches Antarctica. An Albatross appears and leads them out of the Antarctic. The ship’s crew praises the albatross caused shoots the bird. This crime arouses the anger of spirits who led the ship into the unknown water and the ship couldn’t move. Water was anywhere and they didn’t have a drop to drink. The sailors blame the mariner for the torment of their thirst. They wear the dead bird around his neck to illustrate the burden he must suffer from killing the bird. Eventually the ship means a ghostly vessel. On board are death as Capitan and deathly – pale woman as a symbol of life-in-death. They are playing dice for the souls of the crew. Death wins the lives of the crew members and life-in-death wins the life of the mariner. His name is a clue to the M’s fate. A fate worse than death as punishment for his kidding of the albatross one by one the crew members die but the mariner lives on. He sees sea creatures swimming in the water earlier he considered them ugly but now he sees true beauty and blesses them, when he does it the albatross forth and his guilt is partially forgiven. The bodies of the crew possesses by good spirits rise again and direct the ship back home, but then the ship thinks in a whirlpool and only the mariner survived. The mariner has to wander the earth and tell his story and teach a lesson to those he meets. After hearing the mariner’s story the Wedding-Guest returns home and ? “a sadder and a wiser man”. The poem explores the violation of nature and is resulting psychological cal effects on the mariner, who believes that the fate of the crew as the direct result of his having shot down an albatross. Some critics preview that the ancient mariner as autobiographical portrait of Coleridge himself with his// Others consider that the poet wanted to illustrate the difference between reign pagan superstitions and Catholic religion.

Robert Southey (1774-1843)

He was an English poet essay writer, historian and biographer he also belong to the lake school. He wrote a radical play “Wat Taylor” (1794) and the time his radical period but them he follows Wordsworth and Coleridge to both conservatism. He was fond verse narratives set in distant lands. Thalaba, The Destroyer” (1801), “Medoc” (1805), “The curse of”. He collected and printed the children’s classic such as “The story of the Three Bears”, “The original Goldilocks story”. Several editions of his collected poems were printed during his lifetime. His mastery of prose is illustrated by his classic “Life of Nelson”.

 

John Byron, his father married her second wife for her money. Then he moved to France to escape from creditors and Katherine Byron followed him. She returned to England to give birth to her son on English soil. George was born on the 22 January 1729 in lodgings at Holles St, London. Then his mother moved to Aberdunshire, Scotland and Byron spent his childhood there. Katherine Byron was emotionally unstable and brought up her son in an atmosphere of extreme tenderness, fierce temper, insensitivity and pride. She could mock his lameness (he was born with a clubfoot) and at the same time she consulted doctors about its correction. Early schooling cultivated in Byron a devotion to leading a great passion for history. He used it in his later writings. With the death in 1918 of his great uncle the “Wicked” fifth lord Byron George became the sixth Baron Byron of Rockdale, heir to New stead Abbey the family seat in Nottinghamshire. The boy was sent to Harrow (1801-1805) where he excelled in oratory, wrote verse and played sports. After school he attended Trinity College Cambridge from October 1805 until July 1808 where he got M.A. degree. His first collection of verses inspired by his friendship and experiences at Harrow and Cambridge “Hours of Idleness” (1807). Some of the poems were school boy translations from the classics and imitations of preromantics such as Thomas Grey, Robert Burns and his contemporaries Walter Scott and Thomas Moore. The work showed the young poet’s influences, interests, talent and the main direction of his work. Some of the poems were written in heroic couplets in the manners of Alexander Pope, a model for Byron throughout his career. In some autobiographical poems, Byron experiments with a description of his true self and of fictive elements giving a true picture and adding some invention, he understood the effectiveness of this method and he used it in his major works “Wild Harolds Pilgrimage”, “The Oriental Tails” and “Don Juan”. In February 1808 the influential Whig journal “The Edinburgh review” published a notice “Hours of Idelness” which combined fair criticism with personal assaults on the author. Infuriated, Byron answered with a satire “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” published anonymously. It was written in heroic couplets and criticized most of the poets and play writers of the time including Walter Scott, Roberty Southey, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and others. The satire created a stir. Three more additions were published. Byron cancelled the fifth edition because he had come know and respects some of the victims of his satire. In 1809 Byron began a four of the Eastern Mediterranean. He went from England Lisbon, then on horseback across Spain to Greece and Albania. In Albania they were entertained by Ali Basha a ruler of Albania and Western Greece. Ruthless, sophisticated and sensuous he represented the type of romantic villain, that Byron drew later in his oriental tails. The contrast between the glory and might of ancient Greece and its contemporary disgrace under Turkish domination filled Byron with sorrow. He expressed his feelings in his poem “Don Juan” in 1810 Byron visited Turkey. During the 2 month that he spent in Constantinople his distaste for the Turkish people increased. He travelled back to Athens, where he studied Italian and Greece. He sailed back to England in 1811. He travelled around the country for 2 years and got source material for his works. In March 1809 Byron took his seat in the House of Lords and in January 1812 he resumed it. During his political career he spoke in the House 3 times. In his first speech on the 27 February he defended the weavers who had broken the weaver machinery that deprived them of their work and brought them to near Starvation. 21 April he spoke for Catholic emancipation. 1 June he presented the petition for the reform of parliament. In March 1812 Cantos 1 and 2 of “Child Harold’s Pilgrimage” were published. They became very popular. Byron woke up one morning famous. In fact it was his poetic journal of his Mediterranean and Eastern Tour in 1809-1811, the description in the poem are colorful and full of energy. In this work Byron expressed the so-called “World weariness” because of the chaos of the French revolution and Napoleonic wars. In Cantos 1 Harold leaves his native Albion because his bored with life. He wants to find peace and spiritual rebirth. The poem has a subtitled “A Romance” recalling the medieval romance where knights go in search of Holy objects. Some places in the poem are associated with the Napoleon campaign. The ruins of Greece awake thoughts of the wills of tyranny, and on the sad ending of the powerful civilization and “Men of might”. Child Harold is a typical romantic character type-defiant, melancholy, haunted by secret guilt. He is concerned with the suffering caused by war and oppression. In Summer 1814 Byron published his “Hebrew Melodies”, but some of the poems are not at all Hebrew or religious. They are love songs and reflective pieces expressing sadness, longing and desolation. In 1816 Byron left England forever. He lived in Rome and Venice. There he returned to satire and began to write his poem “Don Juan”. In the opening canto the 16 year old Juan has a first love affair with a married women and his mother sends him on a long European Tour. During the next 5 years Byron added 15 more cantos, but he left the poem unfinished “Don Juan” is a satire on that age and the greatest verse epic English scene “Paradise Lost”. The poem includes a lot of subjects, incidents, moves, countries. The poet included his observation on liberty, tyranny, war, love, hypocrisy and other topics. The landscape stretches from Spain to Greece, then to Turkey, Russia. Byron mentions Kentucky in North America and them stops in England.

Late Romanticism. Persy Bysshe (1792 – 1822) John Keats (1795 – 1821)

Persy Bysshe Shelley was an English poet, who rebelled against English politics and conservative values. His work reflected radical idieas abd revolutionary optimism of that time. Like many poets of his day Shelley employed mythologilac themes and images. Symbolism, political abstractions are characteristic of Shelley’s poetry.”Ode to the West Wind”. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born into an aristocratic family in Sussex. His father was a Sussex squire and a member of parliament, whe Shelley was six years old, his father sent him to a day school run by the vicon of the church. The first ten years were happy and healthy. Later he reminded his “dear Home” “the early hopes and joys”. Shelley attended Eton and in 1810he entered the Oxford University College. In 1811 he was expelled from the college for publishing his pamphlet “The Necessity of Atheism” which he wrote together with Thomas Jefferson Hogg. He moved to Wales after finding out that he was watched by Home Office Spies because of his radical activities and writings. In 1813 Shelley published his first important poem “Queen Mab” which was a philosophical poem. It appeared when Shelley was 21. The poet sad that the main themes of the poem were the Past, the Present and the Future. His descriptions are universal they show the contents of the poet’s mind, his religious believes and his “passion for reforming the world”. The plot of the poem shows not events but the development of the authors thought about the progress of the world. The poem was formed the “Chartist Bible”. The plot of the poem is as follows: Queen Mab steals the soul of the sleeping Ianta (the symbol of the mankind) and takes her soul to the stars. Here the Queen shows her all the brutality of the Past and Present in contrast with the visions of the Future. The action takes place in the Universe but the author depicts quite familiar to everybody phenomena: tyranny, militarism, bargaining, religion. Common people have to work hard to make the aristocracy wealthier. Poverty and hard work killed the talents of numerous Miltons, Newtons and other famous people. Shelley draws the utopian pictures of the Future. Desserts will become reach pastures. Cold climate will get warmer and the man of the Future will change. It will be free and happy. The whole poem is written in the form a vision. Shelley didn’t print the poem, but distributed it among his friends. In 1821 when the poem was published in the “Examiner” he wrote a letter of protest to the editor. He thought that the poem could injure different people, but not serve the secret course of freedom. The summer of 1816 Shelley spent with Lord Byron at Lake Geneva. There he composed “Hymn to Intellectuel Beauty”. His wife Mary Wollstonecraft started the novel “Frankenstein”. In 1817 Shelley published his political pamphlet “The Revolt of Islam”. A poem where Cyntha, a maiden joins her forces with revolutionary Laon. They are burned alive as a sacrifice to the hunger and plague. By Shelley’s words he wanted to describe the revolution that could take place in any European country. In 1818 Shelley moved to Italy where Byron lived at that time. There he wrote “Prometheus Unbound”, a lyrical drama. This is a deeply personal work about Prometheus who brings fire to humanity. It’s often considered Shelley’s best work. Prometheus used knowledge as weapon to defeat evil, to lead mankind from ignorance to wisdom. Jupiter punished him by chaining him to a rock of Caucuses. A vulture was pecking his heart which was renewed. Shelley adapted this story to his views. The son greater then his father was born to dethrone Evil and bring back a happier reign. Strength in the person of Hercules liberates humanity.in the person of Prometheus. Asia, the wife of Prometheus, which symbolizes Nature gets back her beauty and is united to her husband, the symbol of the human race in a perfect and happy union. The poem ends happily, humanity is rescued. The “Cenci” was a five act tragedy based on the history of a 16th century Roman family and the Mask of Anarchy (written in 1819 published in 1832 was a political protest which was written after the Manchester Massacre. The poem describes the rulers of England at that time and is full of sarcasm. The symbol of power in the poem is the procession of hangman in fancy dresses. In 1822 Shelley began to write the poem “The Triumph of Life”. The poem remained unfinished. One day Shelley sailed to an Italian port to meet one of his friends. He never learn to swim. He forecasted many times his death by drowning. During the storm his boat sank and Shelley drowned on July 8, 1822. His ashes were later buried in Rome.

John Keats (1795 – 1821)

He was a renowned poet of the English Romantic movement. He wrote some of the grates English language poems including “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode to a Grecian Urn”.

Keats was born 21, October, 1725 in London. He had three siblings and his father worked as an employee in a livery stable. After leaving school he worked as an apprentice to Dr. Hammond, a surgeon. Soon his father died of the riding accident and his mother died of tuberculosis. Together with his brother John moved to Hampster. There he studied medicine and Natural History and such authors as William Shakespeare and Jeffrey Choser. Keats published his first collection “Poems” 1817. It included poems “To my Brother George”, “O Solitude, If I Must Thee Dwell”, “Happy is England”. The same year Keats met Percy Bysshe Shelley, and they became great friends. Having worked on it for many years, Keats finished his epic poem which consisted of four books: “Endymion: A Poetic Romance”, “ A Thing of Beauty is a Joy forever”. In Summer he travelled to The Lake District in Scotland. He began to suffer from disease, but he was able to organize the publication of his next volume of poetry. It was published in 1820 and contained some of his best known works – “Hyperion”, “To Autumn”, “Ode to a Nightingale”. Nightingale shows all the pain and sufferings that Keats experienced during his short life-time: the death of his mother, the physical pain that he saw as a ypung apprentice at St. Guy’s Hospital, the death of his brother. In September 1820 Keats moved to Italy with the last hope for recovering. By early 1821 Keats was confined to bad. He died 23, February in Rome and now rests in the protestant cemetery in Rome near his friend Shelley who died a year later. During his lifetime and since, John Keats inspired numerous authors, poets and artists and now he remains one of the most widely read and studied 19th century poets.