{"product_id":"john-clare-a-biography-9780374179908","title":"John Clare: A Biography","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohn Clare: A Biography\u003c\/strong\u003e by Bate, Jonathan. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780374179908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe long-awaited literary biography of the supreme \"poets poet\"\n\nJohn Clare (1793-1864) is the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self, but until now he has never been the subject of a comprehensive literary biography.\n\nHere at last is his full story told by the light of his voluminous work: his birth in poverty, his work as an agricultural labourer, his burgeoning promise as a writer--cultivated under the gaze of rival patrons--then his moment of fame in the company of John Keats and the toast of literary London, and finally his decline into mental illness and his last years confined in asylums. Clares ringing voice--quick-witted, passionate, vulnerable, courageous--emerges in generous quotation from his letters, journals, autobiographical writings, and his poems, as Jonathan Bate, the celebrated scholar of Shakespeare, brings the complex man, his beloved work, and his ribald world vividly to life.\nJonathan Bate is the author of The Genius of Shakespeare and The Song of the Earth. He is Leverhulme Research Professor of English Literature at the University of Warick.\nA Booklist Editors Choice John Clare (1793-1864) is the greatest working-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self, but until now he has never seen the subject of a comprehensive literary biography. Here, at last, is his story, revealed by the light of his voluminous work: his birth in poverty, his work as an agricultural laborer, his burgeoning promise as a writer cultivated under the gaze of rival patrons, his moment of fame in the company of John Keats as the toast of literary London, and finally his decline into mental illness and confinement in asylums. Clares ringing voice—quick-witted, passionate, vulnerable, courageous—emerges through generous quotation from his letters, journals, autobiographical writings, and poems, as Jonathan Bate, the celebrated scholar of Shakespeare, brings the complex man, his beloved work, and his ribald world vividly to life. \"[An] engrossing volume . . . Bate makes Clares life as fascinating for us today as it was for Victorians, and his scholarship corrects the mistakes of earlier biographers without clogging the narrative. By surveying a broad selection of his subjects work, he sustains his contention that Clare ought to be considered a major poet. His unaffected diction, blessedly unencumbered by the ornate conventions of his time, sounds contemporary . . . In this groundbreaking biography and the judicious selection of poems [made by Bate] in I Am, John Clares voice carries across the centuries and speaks to us as freshly as the unspoiled nature he loved.\"—Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader \"Splendid . . . It is Clares love of his native countryside that comes through most powerfully in this volume . . . Thanks to Mr. Bates biography, Clare will no longer be remembered as a mere madman or prodigy, but will be granted his rightful place in the canon as Englands pre-eminent poet of nature.\"—Amanda Kolson Hurley, The Washington Times \"Perceptive.\"—Adam Kirsch, Bookforum \"Bates thorough and lively [study] provides a more nuanced view both of Clares psychological complexity as a person and of the possibilities for artistic and intellectual development available in the milieu of Clares upbringing than has hitherto been available.\"—Eric Gudas, The Bloomsbury Review \"One of the challenges for [Clares] biographer is to establish a living sense of the diverse realms he inhabited as agricultural worker, fashionable poet, foundering literary celebrity, and mental patient. Another is to trace the development of Clares crystalline poetic vision, which unerringly focused and deepened itself while his beloved Northamptonshire landscape, his financial prospects, his literary status and even, at last, much of his personality, fell apart round him. Jonathan Bates biography, the first full-scale life to appear since 1932, succeeds splendidly on both counts, not only making generous use of Clares own wonderful prose and verse but adding historical perspective and a constant, intelligent probing . . . One of the strengths of John Clare: A Biography is its refusal to propose easy answers to any of the questions raised by Clares life. Bate has an essayists ability to walk around a problem, interrogating it from various sides . . . Clares is an extraordinary story, both disturbing and inspiring. Jonathan Bate tells it in considerable detail and this is a big book, with a level of detail and intricacy of argument which demand stamina from the reader. But its seriousness, compassion, and lightness of touch make it highly readable.\"—Grevel Lindop, The Times Literary Supplement \"Fascinating . . . For more than a century, Clare has been hailed as a victim—of an uncultivated up\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44955029471285,"sku":"ByrdShop_0374179905","price":32.22,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780374179908_e51e76b2-8b54-4f9e-8495-a85921769239.jpg?v=1778828864","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/john-clare-a-biography-9780374179908","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}