John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley were both leading poets in the second generation of Romanticism. They were born and died within a few years of each other, and both died very young, Keats at twenty-five, Shelley at twenty-nine. The two were, however, from very different backgrounds. Shelley was born into the rural landed gentry and educated at Eton and Oxford. Keats was part of the urban lower middle class and, though he received a good education at Clarke's School in Enfield, never went to university. Money was a constant worry for him, and unlike Shelley, he had to work for a living, as an apothecary. During their lifetimes, Shelley was much the better known of the two.

Keats and Shelley wrote in the same poetic forms (notably sonnets and odes) and often on the same subjects (romantic and spiritual love, the imagination, and a sense of awe in the presence of beauty or genius). Both also wrote important prose works, Keats in his letters, Shelley in his political and anti-religious pamphlets. Shelley was certainly more interested in politics than Keats, and one of the major themes that runs through his work is his hatred of tyranny. Keats wrote more pastoral poetry and tended to prefer celebratory verse full of vivid images. Shelley's subjects are more cerebral and philosophical.