Keats House ☆☆☆
The house in Hampstead where John Keats wrote his most famous poems and met his love, Fanny Brawne
The Romantic poet John Keats lived in the front parlor of this lilywhite Regency villa in Hampstead, known as "Wentworth Place," from December 1818 to September 1820, along with his friend Charles Brown.
Keats paid Brown a monthly rent of £5 (£250 in modern prices) plus "half the liquor bill."
It was here that Keats wrote his most famous works, chief among them his series of odes including "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale," which Brown caimed Keats penned while sitting under a plum tree in the garden. (For the record, nearby Spanairds Inn pub, which Keats frequented, claims the same honor for a tree in its garden.)
It was also here that Keats met and fell in love with the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, whom he initially described as "beautiful, elegant, graceful, silly, fashionable and strange."
The two were soon engaged to be married (the ring is here at the museum), but with Keat's tuberculosis worsening, he traveled to the warmer climate of Italy hoping for a cure. John Keats died in Rome, in a pink house overlooking the Spanish Steps, in February of 1821. He was 25 years old.
The museum retains a cast of Keats' death mask.
Tips
Museum docents lead 30-minute free tours at 3pm.
If you are paying the admission, I imagine you are a Keats fan to begin with, so expect to spend at least half an hour here.
Related
A 16th century pub on Hampstead Heath that inspired Keats, Dickens, and Stoker
John Keats' most famous poem, written while in resident at the Keats House, perhaps while sitting at the Spaniards Inn
