John Keats: A New Life

This definitive biography explodes myths of Keats as a delicate, tragic figure, portraying him instead as a flesh-and-blood man driven by ambition, sexual desire, jealousy, and struggles with alcohol and opium.

Nicholas Roe draws on original research to detail Keats's early life at his family's livery stables, family tragedies, medical training, political leanings, doomed love for Fanny Brawne, and final battle with tuberculosis at age 25.

It reassesses key turning points, locations in his poems, and influences like Leigh Hunt, offering fresh insights into the Romantic poet's imaginative quest.