John Keats (1795-1821) is one of the greatest and most loved of all English poets. Beyond the richness of his work, his poignant life has helped to define the modern paradigm of the poet's story. The son of a stable keeper, Keats was orphaned as a boy. He trained as a doctor but gave up his profession for poetry. He contracted tuberculosis while nursing his brother through the fatal illness, and died in Rome at the age of twenty-five. Ardent, generous, and noble, he is a figure of tragic dimension.

Andrew Motion's dramatic and astute narration of one of the representative lives in English literature is the first new look at Keats in a generation. Unlike previous biographers, Motion pays close attention to the social and political contexts in which Keats came to maturity, and interleaves Keats's life with his work, making incisive use of Keats's letters.