19th Century
A01=John Clare
Author_John Clare
Category=DCF
Category=DNL
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eq_poetry
Product details
- ISBN 9781857540321
- Weight: 260g
- Dimensions: 132 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jul 1996
- Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The first literary experiences of John Clare (1793-1864) included the tales handed down by word of mouth in his native village, and as a mature poet he reworked them in his narrative verse. This edition, published for Clare's bicentenary, comprises the tales he wished to include in his third collection, "The Shepherd's Calendar" (1827), and previously unpublished poems which show the range of his narrative achievement. The detailed introduction traces the composition of the poems. Clare's own description of local customs, his previously unpublished draft essay on English pastoral poetry, and a full glossary are included. Clare's original spelling and punctuation are preserved.
John Clare (1793-1864): Born the son of a thresher at Helpston, Northamptonshire, John Clare is a rural poet and story teller. He is a poet of spiritual originality, as compelling at his best as Crabbe and Wordsworth as a story teller in verse. He was an assiduous practitioner of the sonnet form at all periods of his poetic career. The sonnets he produced in the last few years before his institutionalisation in 1837, first at High Beech and then in Northampton General Asylum, are of particular interest, since he exploited the inherent brevity of the form to express a simultaneous precision of observation and starkness of vision that he rarely achieved either before or after.
