John Clare was born in Northamptonshire in 1793 , a son of a farm labourer he grew up working on the land. It was this connection with nature that would form the basis of his early works and led to him being known as the “Peasant Poet.”
However Clare also illustrated the problems of alienation, the success of his early poems led to him being torn between the Literary world and the often insular rural world.
Failure to fit in to either of these worlds led to bouts of depression and other mental health problems.
As his behaviour became more erratic , he was admitted to an Asylum in Essex.
These later poems are now considered amongst his best works portraying a man of nature dealing with imprisonment.
In the late 20th Century, Clare’s work gained wider readership and he is now considered one of the main Romantic poets.
