Moorgate, Enfield, Edmonton and Hampstead: The Cross-City Migrations of John Keats

Lisica, Flora (2024) Moorgate, Enfield, Edmonton and Hampstead: The Cross-City Migrations of John Keats. In: Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration. Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 255-262. ISBN 9781350242012

Abstract

This chapter presents new interpretations of John Keats’s poems in the context of his relationship to London. Born in Moorfield, Keats spent his school years between semi-rural Enfield and Edmonton, then moved to Southwark to pursue his medical studies, before settling in what was then suburban Hampstead. The chapter argues that Keats’s migrations between the city centre and its surroundings shaped his representation of nature in his poems. It also addresses London's geographical expansion in the early nineteenth century, which was reshaping the relationship between the urban and the rural, and reads Keats's poetry as a vehicle for transporting some of the nature which had been lost back into the city. The chapter argues for the continuing resonance of these ideas for Londoners today, and in the context of the edited collection, it makes the case for both migrations from the surrounding countryside and cross-city migrations as significant parts of the history of London and migration.

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