19-21 May 2017

Keats House, Hampstead

The Keats Foundation is delighted to announce that next year’s bicentennial John Keats Conference will be held from Friday 19 – Sunday 21 May 2017 at Keats House, Hampstead. The theme will be ‘John Keats, 1817: Moments, Meetings, and the Making of a Poet’, and our confirmed Keynote Speakers will be Kelvin Everest (Liverpool), Theresa M. Kelley (Wisconsin), and Greg Kucich (Notre Dame).

So many important things happened in 1817 for John Keats, from his decision to quit medicine and  the momentous publication of Poems to his seeing the Elgin Marbles, meeting Isabella Jones, writing his ‘Negative Capability’ letter and finishing Endymion just as  the first of Blackwood’s attacks on the ‘Cockney School’ began. As 1817 drew to a close Keats  was at the ‘Immortal Dinner’ in Haydon’s painting room. This was  the year  when so much was put in motion for Keats’s  later writings and  literary relationships.

Please project papers on any aspect of Keats’s writings, life and literary relationships in 1817 and beyond. A bicentenary focus 1817-2017 would be helpful, but all paper proposals on John Keats and his circle will be welcomed. The formal Call for Papers will be issued later in the autumn of this year.

Nicholas Roe (St Andrews), Richard Marggraf Turley (Aberystwyth) and Sarah Wootton (Durham)