Bloomsbury Poetry Classics are selections from the work of some of our greatest poets. The series is aimed at the general reader rather than the specialist and carries no critical or explanatory apparatus. This can be found elsewhere. In the series the poems introduce themselves, on an uncluttered page and in a format that is both attractive and convenient. The selections have been made by the distinguished poet, critic and biographer Ian Hamilton. John Keats was born in 1795, the son of a livery-stable keeper. An orphan by the age of 14, he was apprenticed to a surgeon for a time but gave up medicine for poetry. His luxuriant early work was savaged by the critics but he remained assured in his conviction that he would eventually be among the English poet's and his volume of 1820 was more favourably viewed. Keat's longed-for marriage to Fanny Brawne was prevented by the onset of the tuberculosis that killed him, at the age of 26, in 1821.