John Clare was born in the small English village of Helpston in 1793. His parents were peasants, and both of them were virtually illiterate. However, he did receive some formal education, and gained a love of literature from a young age. During his school days, he also met and became romantically involved with fellow student Mary Joyce. Though the two later went their separate ways, Clare wrote poetry to Mary for the rest of his life.
While working as a laborer, he began to write his own poetry, and in 1820 he published his first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. The book became an overnight success, going through four editions the year it was published, and receiving glowing reviews from critics. In 1821, Clare published another collection, The Village Minstrel and Other Poems. The book repeated many of the poetic forms used in Rural Life, but stuck to a narrower range of country themes. The Village Minstrel did not gain the runaway success of Rural Life, but it was nevertheless received favorably by reviewers, who saw Clare developing his own unique style.
In 1820, Clare married Patty Turner, and set up house with her in Helpston. Their home became a popular destination for well-educated urban people with an interest in literature. Clare at once enjoyed the attention and loathed the feeling of being treated like a spectacle, or, as he wrote, a “peep show,” by strangers. However, he continued to write, publishing two more books, The Shepherd’s Calendar and The Rural Muse, by 1835.
Neither achieved the success of his first volume, and, by 1836, Clare’s mental health had begun to decline. He never published another book in his lifetime. In 1837 he was admitted to High Beech asylum. Unsatisfied with his situation, in 1841 he escaped the asylum and returned to his family. However, Patty found it increasingly difficult to care for him, and five months later he was admitted to Northampton Lunatic Asylum, where he spent the rest of his life. He died in 1864, at the age of 70.
While in the asylum Clare continued to write poetry. The majority of these later poems are love poems, often addressed to Mary Joyce, but he also continued to write more original work. Although none of this work was published during his lifetime, today it is often anthologized alongside his earlier work. His poem "I Am!" is a particularly well-known work from his later period.
Today, Clare is seen as one of the greatest Romantic poets. Although still less famous than his contemporaries Keats and Byron, readers admire his skill with language, sensitivity, and idiosyncratic perspective. The environmental crisis has driven more readers to Clare, who admire his remarkable attention and empathy towards the non-human world.
In “Autumn,” the English Romantic poet John Clare describes how the land changes as summer gives way to fall. The poem employs a string of similes to compare the autumnal landscape to the things of domestic country life. However, at the end of the...
“The Badger” is a poem by the English Romantic poet John Clare. It describes the traditional sport of “badger baiting,” in which a badger is captured and made to fight with dogs until it dies. The poem was published in 1820, as part of Clare’s...
“First Love” is a love poem by the English Romantic poet John Clare. Clare was born in 1793 in the small village of Helpstone. Before leaving school at the age of 12, he developed a love of poetry. His first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life...
"I Am!" laments the difficulty of asserting an individual identity in a hostile world. First published in 1848, it is one of the most famous poems by the nineteenth-century English poet John Clare. Clare was born in 1793 in a small village to...
John Clare was born in 1793, in the English village of Helpstone to Parker and Ann Stimson Clare. His father was a field laborer, and both of his parents were essentially illiterate. Clare received some schooling and learned basic reading and...
“Love Lives Beyond the Tomb” is a poem about love by the English Romantic poet John Clare, written while he was an unwilling resident of Northampton Insane Asylum. Like all of Clare’s later work, it was never published during his lifetime, but...
“The Yellowhammer’s Nest” is one of the best-known poems by the English Romantic poet John Clare. It was written in the mid-1820s and published in Clare’s final collection, The Rural Muse (1835), as part of a series of poems about bird’s nests....
