John Clare (1793-1864)

Clare is one of the contested figures in the ‘Romantic Movement’. He has the credentials, a farm labourer, his nature poetry was based on detailed observation of the world around him, he was mostly self educated and he ended his life in what was then called a lunatic asylum.

But his poetry sits awkwardly against his more well known and better connected peers. His ‘nature poetry’ reads like the product of man who had lived and worked in the landscapes he described. Attempts to claim he is central to the period sound like special pleading.

His biography is worth reading for an insight into the reality of poetry in the Romantic period.