Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #65980 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

'Book of the Year', The Tablet
'The passionate intimacy and grace of Clare's poetry are
beautifully described, and so is Clare's extraordinary and fascinating
life'

Simon Kovesi on Independent, October 2003
Groundbreaking... this magnificent biography will be central to our appreciation of the poet for many years to come.

Peter Washington in Literary Review, October 2003
Excellent... Let us be grateful for a biography which should do much to restore the poet to his proper place.

Customer Reviews

One of the great literary biographies, unmissable!!
I have spent the last few months gradually reading this wonderful biography before bed at night, and looked forward to every page of it. This is a truly magnificent biography of a man who was a contemporary of Byron, Shelley and Keats but who never quite reached their heights. He did not die young or reach Europe like they did, he came from humble origins, worked as a labourer and sadly ended up in a lunatic asylum for the last years of his life.
Here Bate takes you through Clare's life with sensitivity and real perception. Using his letters, manuscripts and of course poems Bate presents a very troubled man, but all the same still England's finest pastoral poet. I highly recommend this book. I believe this will be the definitive Clare biography for years to come.