It was a time of great change, a time of science, of burgeoning industry, of technological innovation, and of revolution. For some it was a time for hope and a belief in better times ahead for humankind; for others it was a time of despair and a sadness for what had been lost. It was the time of the Romantic Poets.

John Clare

John Clare (the Peasant Poet) was born the son of a farm labourer on 13 July, 1793, in the village of Helpstone in Northamptonshire. Though he was working in the fields when still a child, he continued to attend the local Church School until the age of 12. He was bookish, not given to play, and very short; barely reaching 5 foot, he was painfully self-conscious, and socially inadequate. Indeed, he preferred to communicate via the written word rather than through speech, and he would remain silent for long periods. He never truly felt at home in the company of his fellow farm labourers who did not share his passion, “I live here among the ignorant like a lost man”, he said, “they are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.” But then John Clare wasn’t interested in work, because he was in love, he was in love with nature: “

I fled to solitudes from passions dream,

 But strife pursued – I only know I am.

 I was being created in the race of men,

disdaining bounds of place and time,

 A spirit that could travel o’er the space,

 of earth and heaven, like a thought sublime – tracing creation,

 like my Maker free – a soul unshackled – like eternity.”

In 1820, the same year that he published his first book of poetry “Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery” he married Patty Turner with whom he had 7 children, but he was a poor father and a bad husband. He worked hard but he didn’t understand money. He just wanted to write and as time went on he increasingly could not abide ugliness, and everything was ugly that impinged upon the untrammelled beauty of nature, and none was more ugly than man. He drained the fens, he enclosed the land, he deprived the common man of his rights of pasture. Always unable to settle he just wanted to return home but he never knew where home was. He wanted to sleep beneath the stars and commune with nature but no such God-like place existed except in his imagination.