ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Today marks the day in 1821 when John Keats, the Romantic poet who waxed on Grecian urns and nightingales, succumbed to tuberculosis. He was only 25. John was thought to have contracted the infection while taking care of his critically ill brother Tom, who died in 1819.

Detailed explanation-2: -The young English poet John Keats died aged just 25 in Rome on 23 February 1821, having been diagnosed with tuberculosis, or consumption as it was then known, just over a year before.

Detailed explanation-3: -He had suffered from tuberculosis since early 1820 and, after months of distress and pain, finally succumbed to the disease at the age of just 25. Keats was a failed medical student, who had swapped operations for odes after realising his poetic talent.

Detailed explanation-4: -The story goes that in early February of 1820 he caught a fever and had a haemorrhage-coughed up blood-and by virtue of his medical training, Keats deemed this was arterial blood, thus signifying what he construed as his ‘death-warrant’.

Detailed explanation-5: -The writers were among the most affected category which was more likely, due to the promiscuous and bohemian life, to have the disease. Alphonse Daudet, Thomas Chatterton, Keats, James Boswell, Baudelaire, Heinrich Heine, Dostoievski and Oscar Wild are only a few examples of writers suffering from syphilis.