John Clare
Who was John Clare?
English poet (1793-1864)
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on John Clare (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
John Clare was born on 13 July 1793 in a cottage in Helpston, Northamptonshire, England, to Parker Clare, a farm worker, and Ann Stimson. He grew up poor, with only basic schooling before starting work at a young age. Despite this, Clare's love for nature grew, and he began writing poetry in his teens, often jotting down verses while working in the fields. His early reading, including James Thomson's The Seasons, influenced his detailed descriptions of the countryside.
Clare's first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was published in 1820 and was well-received in London. It went through four editions in its first year, and Clare briefly became famous, gaining the attention of patrons and publishers. He published more works like The Village Minstrel (1821), The Shepherd's Calendar (1827), and The Rural Muse (1835). However, they didn't sell as well, and he faced financial problems and declining mental health. He was troubled by what people called depression and instability, worsened by the enclosure of fields around Helpston.
In 1837, Clare went to a private asylum in Epping Forest run by Dr. Matthew Allen. He seemed to recover enough to walk home to Helpston in 1841, a journey of about eighty miles that he made without money or food, an event he described vividly. But soon after, he was sent to St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, where he stayed for the rest of his life. Even there, he continued writing poetry, creating some of his most direct and personal work, like 'I Am,' which clearly conveys his sense of isolation and lost identity.
Clare's poetry is known for its detailed, personal observations of birds, plants, insects, and seasonal changes. He wrote in the local Northamptonshire dialect and resisted his publishers' efforts to change his spelling and grammar, though editors often did so without his approval. His portrayals of rural life were realistic, focusing on the true labor and ecology of the English countryside. His biographer Jonathan Bate called him 'the greatest laboring-class poet that England has ever produced,' noting his powerful writing about nature, rural childhood, and the sense of alienation.
John Clare died on 20 May 1864 at St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, at the age of seventy. He was buried in his hometown of Helpston, where his grave remains a place of remembrance. His work, overlooked for much of the century after his death, gained recognition in the late twentieth century through published editions of his original manuscripts and increased interest in his themes of nature and mental health.
Before Fame
Clare grew up in Helpston, a small, closed-off community near the Lincolnshire fens, where daily life focused on farm work and the changing seasons. His father was a thresher, and his family lived in real poverty. Clare went to local schools off and on and later said that a copy of Thomson's The Seasons, which he bought for sixpence at a fair, sparked his interest in poetry. He worked at different jobs, including as a ploughboy, gardener, lime burner, and militiaman, writing poetry in whatever free time he had.
His journey to getting published started when he contacted Stamford bookseller and publisher Edward Drury. Drury saw his talent and put him in touch with John Taylor, a London publisher who also published John Keats. Taylor became Clare's main editor and supporter. Clare's first collection came out in 1820 when readers were eager for real voices from the working class. For a short time, London society was interested in him as both a curiosity and a true talent, although his fame faded faster than his abilities.
Key Achievements
- Published Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820), which went through four editions within its first year and established him as a significant new poetic voice.
- Produced The Shepherd's Calendar (1827), now regarded as one of the most detailed and authentic depictions of the English rural year in verse.
- Wrote 'I Am' and other late asylum poems that are now considered among the most psychologically profound lyric poems of the nineteenth century.
- Contributed ecological observations of such accuracy and detail that his writings are cited as valuable records of early nineteenth-century English wildlife and habitat.
- Underwent a major critical re-evaluation in the late twentieth century, with scholarly editions restoring his original texts and securing his reputation as a major poet of his era.
Did You Know?
- 01.Clare walked approximately eighty miles from the Epping Forest asylum to his home in Helpston in 1841, surviving on grass and tobacco with no money, and wrote a detailed prose account of the journey.
- 02.During his decades at St Andrew's Hospital, Clare sometimes believed himself to be the poet Lord Byron or the boxer Ben Caunt, and wrote poems in the persona of Byron.
- 03.Clare's publishers altered his punctuation, spelling, and dialect without his consent for publication, meaning the texts printed in his lifetime differed substantially from his original manuscripts.
- 04.He recorded over 150 species of birds in his notebooks and poems, with observations so accurate that naturalists have used his writings as historical ecological records.
- 05.The poem now known as 'I Am' was found written on a scrap of paper at St Andrew's Hospital and was first published in 1848 while Clare was still alive, though he received little recognition for it at the time.