John Clare

John Clare (born 13 July 1793 in Helpston) was an English leethwriter, born the son of a farm tiller who came to be known for his breme fortreadings of the English upland and his weep of its upheaval. His leethwriting underwent a hefty ed-bedeeming in the late 20th yearhundred and he is often now thought to be among the most hefty 19th-yearhundred leethwriters. His lifewriter Jonathan Bate says that Clare was "the greatest working-rank leethwrite that England has ever had. No one has ever written more thrithly of umworld, of a shire childhood and of the fremded and unsteadful self". .

He became an tiller while still a child; however, he heeded lore in Glinton church until he was twelve. In his early grown-up years, Clare became a pot-boy in the Blue Bell lede house and fell in love with Mary Joyce; but her father, a wealthy farmer, forbade her to meet him. Subsequently he was a gardener at Burghley House. He enlisted in the fyrd, fanded camp life with Gypsies, and worked in Pickworth as a lime burner in 1817. In the following year he was fained to ontake revestow alay. Badeating stemming from childhood may be the main culprit behind his 5-foot height and may have contributed to his poor bodily health in later life.

Early poems

Clare had bought a copy of Thompson's Seasons and began to write leeths and sonnets. In a seek to hold off his forbears' outcasting from their home, Clare bid his leeths to a steadly bookseller named Edward Drury. Drury sent Clare's leethcraft to his farsib John Taylor of the outwriting firm of Taylor & Hessey, who had outwritten the work of John Keats. Taylor outwrote Clare's Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery in 1820. This book was highly praised, and in the next year his Village Minstrel and other Poems were outwritten.

Midlife

He had wedded Martha ("Patty") Turner in 1820 and became possessed of £45 yearly, a score far beyond what he had ever earned. Soon, however, his income became lacking, and in 1823 he was nearly penniless. The Shepherd's Calendar (1827) met armly, which was not uppened by him selling it himself. As he worked again in the fields his health bettered for a while; but he soon became earnestly ill. Earl Fitzwilliam forestalled him with a new cote and a deal of ground, but Clare could not settle in his new home.

Clare was always torn between the two worlds of written London and his often readless neighbours; between the need to write leethcraft and the need for money to feed and clothe his children. His health began to thole, and he had bouts of stern downheartedness, which became worse after his sixth child was born in 1830 and as his leethcraft sold less well. In 1832, his friends and his London fultumers clubbed together to move the inherd to a bigger cote with a smallholding in the ham of Northborough, not far from Helpston. However, he felt only more befremded.

His last work, the Rural Muse (1835), was yemed belikeny by Christopher North and other reviewers, but this was not enough to feed his wife and seven children. Clare's mind health began to worsen. As his alcohol intake steadily uppened along with his unquemeness with his own selfood, Clare's behaviour became more burstful.. A yemesome tel of this behaviour was swettled in his outburst in a play of The Chepper of Venice, in which Clare quidily raided Shylock. He was becoming a burden to Patty and his inherd, and in July 1837, on the of his outwriting friend, John Taylor, Clare went of his own will (with a friend of Taylor's) to Dr Matthew Allen's homely haven High Beach near Loughton, in Epping Wald. Taylor had sickered Clare that he would beget the best health care.'''

Later life

Clare edwrote breme leeths and sonnets by Lord Byron. His own deal of Child Harold became a cry for former lost love.

In 1841, Clare left the haven in Essex, to walk home, believing that he was to meet his first love Mary Joyce; Clare was overgot that he was wedded with children to her and Martha as well. In his 2nd staystow in 1844 he wrote mightily his bremest leeth, I am.

Today, children at the John Clare School, Helpston's primary, parade through the ham and stow their 'midsummer cushions' around Clare's gravestone (which has the inscriptions "To the Eftmind of John Clare The Northamptonshire Peasant Leethwrite" and "A Leethwrite is Born not Made") on his birthday, in ore of their bremest indweller. The thatched cote where he was born was bought by the John Clare Teaching & Environment Trust in 2005 and is edstoring the cote to its 18th yearhundred fettle.

Poetry

In his time, Clare was meanly known as "the Northhamtonshire Churl Poet". Since his formal learning was short, Clare withstood the brook of the moringly samewised and latined English grammar and speling in his leeths. Many of his them would come to inhold names brooked steadly in his Northamptonshire rerds.

In his early life he struggled to find a stow for his leethcraft in the wending leethly trends of the day. He also felt that he did not belong with other churls. Clare once wrote "I live here among the heedless like a lost man in fact like one whom the rest seemes careless of having anything to do with—they hardly dare talk in my begliding for fear I should name them in my writings and I find more quemeness in wandering the fields than among my quiet neighbours who are unfeeling to everything but work and talking of it and that to no sake." It is mean to see an lark of quidemarkings in many of Clare's first writings, although many outwriters felt the need to remedy this practice in the majority of his work. Clare argued with his editors about how it should be put forth to the ledefolk.

Clare grew up in a period of massive wends in both town and shire as the Bulkbuild Upwending swept Europe. Many former hervest workers, inholding children, shrithed away from the shire to over-crowded towns, following warehouse work. The Harvest Upwend saw grazings ploughed up, trees and hedges uprooted, the fens sieved and the mean land umbset. This destruction of a yeartide-old way of life distressed Clare deeply. His political and social views were predominantly conservative ("I am as far as my moot reaches 'King and Shire' - no Upbringings in Faith and Reveship say I."). He beleaned even to chide about the underling staddle to which English fellowship downed him, swearing that "with the old dish that was geven to my forefathers I am happy."

His early work quemes both in unworld and the loop of the shire year. Leeths such as Winter Evening, Haymaking and Wood Bilds in Summer freals the littiness of the world and the sickerings of shire life, where wights must be fed and crops harvested. Leeths such as Little Trotty Wagtail show his sharp yemeness of wildlife, At this time, he often brooked leethly trends such as the sonnet and the rhyming couplet. His later leethcraft was to be more smighing and brooked trends akin to the folks songs and strolls of his youth, as in Evening.

His knowledge of the kindly world went far beyond that of the biggest Romantic leethwrites. His 'bird's nest leeths' swettle the self-awareness, and obsession with the creative process that captivated the romantics. Clare was the most influential poet to practice in an older trend.

Edlivening of interest in the twentieth yearhundred

Clare was relatively forgotten in the later nineteenth yearhundred, but interest in his work was edlivened by Arthur Symons in 1908, Edmund Blunden in 1920 and John and Anne Tibble in their ground-breaking 1935 2-volume edition. Benjamin Britten set some of 'May' from A Shepherd's Calendar in his Spring Symphony of 1948, and inholding a setting of The Evening Primrose in his Five Flower Songs.

The John Clare Trust bought Clare Cote in Helpston in 2005, preserving it for coming tidebreeds. The Cote has been edstored brooking traditional building ways, and opened to the public. The widest fay of ordly Clare writings are housed at Peterborough Museum, where they are available to view by appointment.

Since 1993, the John Clare Society of North America has organised a yearly session of lorely sheets concerning John Clare.

Leethcraft fays by Clare:
 * Poems Descriptive of Shire Life and Sceneries. London, 1820.
 * The Ham Minstrel, and Other Leeths. London, 1821.
 * The Shepherd's Calendar with Village Stories and Other Poems London, 1827
 * The Village Muse. London, 1835.
 * Sonnet. London 1841
 * First Love
 * Snow Storm.
 * The Firetail.
 * The Badger

Works about John Clare:
 * Frederick Martin. The Life of John Clare.' 1865.
 * Cherry, J. L. Life and remains of John Clare. 1873.
 * Norman Gale Clare's Poems. 1901.
 * Goodridge, John, and Kovesi, Simon eds., John Clare: New Approaches John Clare Society, 2000.
 * Jonathan Bate. John Clare. London: Picador, 2003.
 * Iain Sinclair Edge of The Orison: In the Traces of John Clare's "Journey Out of Essex" Hamish Hamilton, 2005.
 * Powell, David, First Publications of John Clare’s Poems. John Clare Society of North America, 2009.
 * Akroyd, Carry, "natures powers & spells - Landscape Change, John Clare and Me", Langford Press, 2009