1795

31 October Born at the Swan and Hoop Livery Stables, Moorfields.

1797

28 February Birth of George Keats.

1799

18 November Birth of Tom Keats.

1803

3 June Birth of Fanny (Frances Mary) Keats.

August Starts his education at the Rev. John Clarke’s school at Enfield, along with George. Tom was later to attend the school.

1804

16 April Death of his father.

27 June His mother marries William Rawlings. The children sent to live with their grandparents, John and Alice Jennings, at Ponder’s End, Enfield.

1805

8 March Death of his grandfather, John Jennings. With Alice Jennings the children move to Edmonton.

1810

20 March Burial of his mother, who died from tuberculosis, watched over by Keats.

July Alice Jennings appoints John Nowland Sandall and Richard Abbey as the children’s guardians. Sandall died in 1816, leaving Abbey the only guardian.

Summer Leaves Enfield School, and is apprenticed to Thomas Hammond, a surgeon in Edmonton.

1814

First known efforts to write verse (Imitation of Spenser, To Lord Byron, etc.)

19 December Burial of his grandmother. Fanny Keats goes to live with Richard Abbey’s family.

1815

2 February Writes a sonnet on Leigh Hunt’s release from prison.

1 October Enters Guy’s Hospital as a student.

November Writes verse epistle To George Felton Mathew.

1816

5 May O Solitude, his first published poem, appears in the Examiner.

25 July Passes examination at Apothecaries’ Hall; eligible to practise as apothecary, physician, or surgeon.

August Takes Tom to Margate, where he writes an epistle to George.

September In London, joins his brothers in their lodgings.

October Writes On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. Meets Leigh Hunt, Benjamin Haydon, and John Hamilton Reynolds.

November He and his brothers have moved to lodgings in Cheapside.

December Completes Sleep and Poetry. The Chapman’s Homer sonnet is quoted by Hunt in his article on ‘Young Poets’ in the Examiner. Finishes I stood tip-toe.

1817

16 February Hunt shows some of Keats’s poetry to Shelley, William Godwin, Basil Montagu, and Hazlitt at a dinner party.

1 or 2 March Sees Elgin Marbles with Haydon.

3 March His first volume, Poems, published by C. and J. Oilier.

25 March By this time has moved to Hampstead with his brothers.

c. 13 April Taylor and Hessey decide to publish his future books.

14 April Sets out for Isle of Wight, where he arrives the following day.

18 April Plans to begin Endymion. Reading Shakespeare.

c. 24 April Moves to Margate, where Tom joins him. Endymion has been started.

May Visits Canterbury, and meets Mrs Isabella Jones at Hastings at the end of May or beginning of June.

June Returns to Hampstead.

c. 21 August Has finished Endymion I—II.

c. 3 September–5 October Stays at Oxford with Bailey, where he completes Endymion III. Reading Paradise Lost.

October Blackwood’s first attack on the ‘Cockney School’.

22 November-c. 5 December Stays at Burford Bridge, is reading Shakespeare’s Poems, and finishes Endymion on 28 November.

15 December Sees Kean in Richard III at Drury Lane.

c. 16 December Goes with Haydon to meet Wordsworth.

21 December Discusses ‘intensity’ in art and ‘Negative Capability’ in a letter to his brothers.

28 December Attends Haydon’s ‘immortal dinner’. Charles Lamb and William Wordsworth present, among others.

31 January Meets Wordsworth on Hampstead Heath.

1818

January-February Attends Hazlitt’s Lectures on the English Poets. Corrects proof and revises Endymion I-III.

23 January Tom spitting, blood.

March-April Stays at Teignmouth with Tom. Continues preparing Endymion for the press.

9–10 April Hears his Preface to Endymion has been rejected, and writes the second version.

27 April About this date Taylor and Hessey publish Endymion. Has finished Isabella.

3 May Writes to Reynolds on life as ‘a large Mansion of Many Apartments’.

c. 28 May George Keats marries Georgiana Wylie.

24 June Begins walking tour of Scotland and the Lake District after seeing George and Georgiana Keats set out for America from Liverpool.

1 July Writes On Visiting the Tomb of Burns.

2 August Climbs Ben Nevis with Brown.

18 August Reaches Hampstead, having been forced to break off his tour because of a severe chill and sore throat. Finds Tom is very ill.

c. 27 September Croker’s attack on Endymion published in the Quarterly Review. Has begun Hyperion while nursing Tom.

12 October The Examiner reprints Reynolds’s defence of Endymion.

24 October Meets Mrs Isabella Jones again.

November Continues working on Hyperion. Before the end of this month has met Fanny Brawne.

1 December Death of Tom Keats from tuberculosis.