One of his biographers, Robert Gittings, asserts that through his letters Keats became a great writer of prose even before he had achieved true greatness as a poet; yet it was many years after Keats's death before any of these letters was published and longer still before their extraordinary value, to an understanding of both Keats's art and his rich and appealing personality, was adequately appreciated. Certainly it is because of his letters that we have a more exact and vivid view of John Keats than of any other Romantic poet (even George Gordon, Lord Byron). Indeed, there must be few historical figures of any sort who have left so complete and so revealing a glimpse into their genius and so compelling a record of their personalities and the texture of their daily lives as Keats has bequeathed us through his letters. Moving and engrossing in their own right, they are the unintended but essential complement to Keats's poetry.
John Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the eldest of five children (one of whom died in infancy) born to Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats. When Keats was eight his father, a stable keeper, died after a fall from his horse; when the future poet was fourteen, his mother, after an evidently unsuccessful remarriage, died of tuberculosis.
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