About this Event
In December 1817, John Keats went for dinner at the house of the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon. Other guests included William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and the explorer Joseph Ritchie. Contemporary accounts and two hundred years of mythologising now remember the occasion as ‘The Immortal Dinner’.
A Joy Forever is the Keats-themed reading series developed by poets and friends Julia Bird and Mike Sims. Over the last decade, their events at Keats House in Hampstead, the Keats Shelley House in Rome and literary festivals round the UK have taken a playful and social approach to the life and writing of Keats.
The Immortal Dinner is the starting point for an evening of lively chat about the gatherings, get-togethers and chance encounters that kept the Romantics' circle spinning. Expect reading and conversation, old and new poems, games and giveaways.
A Joy Forever: a walk out with John Keats by Julia Bird & Mike Sims - a book inspired by their events - is out now from Paekakariki Press - details at https://blownrose.uk/a-joy-forever/
Image shows a detail from 'Christ's Entry into Jerusalem', by Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1820
Keats is shown in profile, under the arch towards the top right, alongside other 'greats' such as Wordsworth and Hazlitt.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Keats House, 10 Keats Grove, London, United Kingdom
GBP 6.00