John Clare

Born into poverty in 1793, John Clare spent his early years working as a field labourer in the English countryside. Out of that rural life came a poetry drawn with unusual intensity from the natural world and from memories of a childhood spent outdoors, along with a restless, divided sense of self. This biography traces Clare's path from farm work to literary life, following the patrons who shaped his early ambitions and the brief, dazzling period when he was feted in London alongside John Keats.

The book also follows the decline that followed. Clare's mental health deteriorated, and his final years were spent in asylums. Throughout, Jonathan Bate, a scholar best known for his work on Shakespeare, lets Clare speak for himself, quoting extensively from his letters, journals, autobiographical writings and poems. The result is a portrait of a sharp, emotional and frank man, along with the boisterous, earthy world he lived in.