SOURCE: An introduction to John Clare by Himself, edited by Eric Robinson and David Powell, The Mid Northumberland Arts Group and Carcanet Press, 1996, pp. vii-xxiv.

In the following excerpt, Robinson and Powell present an overview of Clare's life and works.

I

From his birth in Helpston in 1793 to his death in Northampton in 1864, except for four visits to London, some months in Epping Forest and his years in the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, John Clare never travelled more than a few miles from his native village. He lived at first under the same roof as his parents in Helpston, moved to another cottage in Northborough only a few miles away in 1832, and then from 1841 spent the remainder of his life in Northampton.

Clare's life-story is told against the background of a particular landscape with its fens, its heaths, its sheep-pastures and its villages and market-towns. (It is significant...