John Keats (1795-1821)
'Gareth Evans, formerly of the Chelsea Botanic Garden [Chelsea Physic Garden\ ... whose website is rich with information and insights, ... and his unrivalled knowledge of the medical botany of Keats's time.'
RS White. Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy, Edinburgh University Press 2020.
Poison Wine
John Keats & the
Botanic Pharmacy.
Keats-Shelley Review 16: 2002
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A detailed analysis of the striking imagery Keats drew from contemporary pharmacy especially the medicinal use of nominally poisonous plants. |
(in) the various Keats's works - the infusions and extracts of nightshade, hemlock, bittersweet, wolfsbane, ... not only were "included in the 1815 edition of the London Pharmacopoeia that Keats would have been examined on during his licensing" as Gareth Evans has engagingly discussed'
'London's immortal druggists', Thomas H. Schmid. From Romanticism and the City ed. Larry H. Peer. Palgrave Macmillan 2011.
The <Wiki> People
Robert John Thornton, New illustration of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus ... (1797-1807) & Wellcome Collection
The Plants
William Curtis, Flora Londinensis, 1777-1798. William Woodville. Medical Botany, 1790.
The Eve of St Agnes
Practising Poetry and Pharmacy
The Wordsworth Trust blog, November 2022
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'the personal attacks ... were defiantly handled by their target, ‘pestleman Jack’. ‘A boy of pretty abilities’, Lockhart derided Keats, ‘who practises poetry and pharmacy’. And that’s just what Keats went on to do in creating this highly polished composition, albeit one with a wild heart.'
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Isabella after Keats
a potted history
'The Wordsworth Trust blog, January 2021.
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'In late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, basil in a pot was a sexy thing: on a windowsill alerts a lover that the lady of the house is available to be entertained.'
Julia Blakey, ‘A Pot of Basil in Every Household’
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Ode to Melancholy
Keats through the Looking Glass
'The Wordsworth Trust blog, July 2021.
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The rich text of Keats's great ode is, at the same time, beautiful and full of stimulating allusions.
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Sensation & Watchfulness
Keats & Nature
The Wordsworth Trust blog, July 2020.
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'That which is creative must create itself'. Keats's remark parallels growth in the natural world. Did formal discussions on the experience of nature enhance Keats's, and his contemporaries', identification with it?
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Keatswatch
'The Wordsworth Trust blog, November 2019.
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Keatswatch ; a natural history game. In an age when many aspired to be natural historians, in Ode to a Nightingale Keats plays with aspects of this role, only to eventually reject it. The self-critical Keats evolving by defining who he isn't.
Dedicated to the memory of my mother Gwyneth Evans (1923-2019) |
Nice Ink, Keats
The Wordsworth Trust blog, January 2019
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The student Keats doodled in his anatomy lecture notes. What was going through his mind? In this post for The Romanticism Blog I start following a some clues.
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Nothing but Flowers
The Lancet, 2011
A short co-authored essay in the The Lancet's 'Perspectives' series
on the content and context of Keats's medical education. (2011).
The Lancet, Volume 378, Issue 9802, Pages 1541 - 1542, 29 October 2011
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61543-2
 Click to open document
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