John Clare
1793 - 1864
John Clare was born in the village of Helpstone, Northamptonshire, England in 1793. The son of an agricultural labourer, he had virtually no schooling but studied James Thompson's Seasons and started verse writing. His first publication was self funded in 1817 but it fared badly. It did, however, bring him to the attention of Keats' publisher, John Taylor who published Poems Descriptive of Rural Life in 1820. It was well received but fashion changed and his later works were poorly received, possibly due to much of the heart being extracted by unsympathetic editing.
In 1837, as a result of his long disappointment, he had a mental breakdown and was admitted to an asylum in Epping Forest. Four years later, he discharged himself and walked the 80 miles home in three and a half days, living on grass he ate by the side of the road! Later that year (1841), he was certified insane and was committed to the Northampton Asylum. He lived there until his death in 1864 writing occasionally.
His poetry is wonderfully descriptive of the English countryside as it existed in the early 19th Century and recaptures the spirit of rural life of that era. The work featured here, now sadly out of print,- The Shepherd's Calendar - was cut savagely by Taylor before publication with many lines excluded and the whole of July was rejected; Clare then had to submit an alternate segment. I have included the longer (rejected) section and the second version, to enable a comparison. Many of the words and much of the spelling will be unfamiliar to modern readers, but the sense does shine through when read aloud.
I have used the full text of the poems rather than the Taylor edited version.
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