New Delhi, May 25 -- On 23 February 1821, a young English doctor suffering from tuberculosis breathed his last on a tiny bed in a house near the Spanish Steps in Rome. In the last six years of his brief life, this 25-year-old man, who looked more like a wispy boy, had begun to write poetry. He had even published four volumes of his work, but none had sold much or got favourable reviews. His dying wish to his friends was to have the epitaph, "Here lies One Whose Name was Writ in Water," engraved on his gravestone. It was duly honoured.

To most of his contemporaries, John Keats was just another unknown poet, destined for obscurity. No one could have guessed the love and adulation he would be receiving more than 200 years after his death. S...