English Romantic poet John Keats was born on October 31, 1795, in London. The oldest of four children, he lost both his parents at a young age. His father, a livery-stable keeper, died when Keats was eight; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later. After his mother’s death, Keats’s maternal grandmother appointed two London merchants, Richard Abbey and John Rowland Sandell, as guardians. Abbey, a prosperous tea broker, assumed the bulk of this responsibility, while Sandell played only a minor role. When Keats was fifteen, Abbey withdrew him from the Clarke School, Enfield, to apprentice with an apothecary-surgeon and study medicine in a London hospital. In 1816 Keats became a licensed apothecary, but he never practiced his profession, deciding instead to write poetry.
Radhika Coomaraswamy is a Sri Lankan lawyer, diplomat and human rights advocate who served as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Confli
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Born in Germany, he later became stateless and spent much of his life in London in the Unit
K. Suneetha Rani is Professor, Centre for Women’s Studies, University of Hyderabad. Her areas of interest are Cultural Studies, New Literatures in English, Translation Studies and Dalit Studies. A
