John Clare: a biography review

Lunatic, lover, poet, this is the definitive biography of the poet’s poet, John Clare.

John Clare (1793-1864) was a great Romantic poet, with a name to rival that of Blake, Byron, Wordsworth or Shelley – and a life to match. The ‘poet’s poet’, he has a place in the national pantheon and, more tangibly, a plaque in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner, unveiled in 1989.

Here at last is Clare’s full story, from his birth in poverty and employment as an agricultural labourer, via his burgeoning promise as a writer – cultivated under the gaze of rival patrons – and moment of fame, in the company of John Keats, as the toast of literary London, to his final decline into mental illness and the last years of his life, confined in asylums.

Clare’s ringing voice – quick-witted, passionate, vulnerable, courageous – emerges through extracts from his letters, journals, autobiographical writings and poems, as Jonathan Bate brings this complex man, his revered work and his ribald world, vividly to life.

‘An exceptional biography… this unusually tactful and sympathetic book tries, for once, not to claim Clare for any particular cause, but to see what he was trying to do in his own terms… Bate has written a superlative book… [a] superb and heartbreaking biography’ Philip Hensher, Spectator

‘I am not sure if Jonathan Bate has written a beautiful book or if he has written a book about a beautiful subject. Perhaps his biography of John Clare qualifies for both descriptions. However it is described, it is a joy to read and a necessary part of civilised education… an adventure story which proclaims the victory of art over adversity… During [Clare’s] final illness, his most repeated cry was “I want to go home.” The beauty of John Clare: A Biography is its understanding of that poignant message’ Roy Hattersley, Independent on Sunday

‘Groundbreaking… this magnificent biography will be central to our appreciation of the poet for many years to come’ Simon Kövesi, Independent

‘Excellent… Let us be grateful for a biography which should do much to restore the poet to his proper place’ Peter Washington, Literary Review

‘In Jonathan Bate, Clare has found a scrupulous and sensitive biographer’ Economist

Praise for The Genius of Shakespeare

'Shrewd and witty . . . there is much in this book to fascinate and provoke' Anthony Holden, Sunday Times

'Exemplary ... wonderfully written and diverse' Peter Ackroyd, The Times

'Robust and enjoyable . . . effortlessly readable' Robert McCrum, Observer