John Clare, Politics and Poetry - Hardcover

by A. Vardy (Author)

John Clare, Politics and Poetry challenges the traditional portrait of 'poor John Clare', the helpless victim of personal and professional circumstance. Clare's career has been presented as a disaster of editorial heavy-handedness, condescension, a poor market, and conservative patronage. Yet Clare was not a passive victim. This study explores the sources of the 'poor Clare' tradition, and recovers Clare's agency, revealing a writer fully engaged in his own professional life and in the social and political questions of the day.

Author Biography

ALAN D. VARDY is an Assistant Professor of English at Hunter College of the City University of New York, and previously held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.