John Keats is described as the last of the great romantic poets, and his brief life, full of poetry, epitomizes the image of tragic genius. The author here reveals Keats to be a man of his time, rediscovering a poet who reacted strongly against an authoritarian state and tried to find a spiritual life free from the repressive Christianity of 19th-century England. Stephen Coote throws much new light on the poems, showing why they were so bitterly attacked, and reveals Keats as a man of real vitality, profoundly original and deeply human.