Table Of ContentJohn Clare
A Literary Life
Roger Sales
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Literary Lives
General Editor: Richard Dutton, Professor of English, Lancaster University
This series offers stimulating accounts of the literary careers of the most admired
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Clinton Machann Harold Pagliaro
MATTHEW ARNOLD HENRY FIELDING
Jan Fergus Mary Lago
JANE AUSTEN E. M. FORSTER
Tom Winnifrith and Edward Chitham James Gibson
CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTË THOMASHARDY
Sarah Wood Gerald Roberts
ROBERT BROWNING GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
Janice Farrar Thaddeus Kenneth Graham
FRANCES BURNEY HENRY JAMES
Caroline Franklin W. David Kaye
BYRON BEN JONSON
Nancy A. Walker John Worthen
KATE CHOPIN D. H. LAWRENCE
Roger Sales Angela Smith
JOHN CLARE KATHERINE MANSFIELD
Cedric Watts Lisa Hopkins
JOSEPH CONRAD CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Grahame Smith Cedric C. Brown
CHARLESDICKENS JOHN MILTON
George Parfitt Peter Davison
JOHN DONNE GEORGE ORWELL
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JOHN DRYDEN SYLVIA PLATH
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GEORGE ELIOT ALEXANDER POPE
Tony Sharpe Richard Dutton
T. S. ELIOT WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
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John Williams Peter Shillingsburg
MARY SHELLEY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Michael O’Neill David Wykes
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY EVELYN WAUGH
Gary Waller John Mepham
EDMUND SPENSER VIRGINIA WOOLF
Tony Sharpe John Williams
WALLACE STEVENS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Joseph McMinn Alasdair D. F. Macrae
JONATHAN SWIFT W. B. YEATS
Leonée Ormond
ALFRED TENNYSON
Literary Lives
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John Clare
A Literary Life
Roger Sales
Professor of English
School of English and American Studies
University of East Anglia
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© Roger Sales 2002
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
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Good Angels be my Guard:
For Sarah and Adrian
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Textual Note and Chronology xii
1. A Cage Glass All Round: Dilettante Patrons and Literary
Philanthropists 1
Mistaken identities 1
Marketable articles 8
The patron’s text 17
Cockneys and peasants 24
2. That Man I Would Have Him To Be: Public Relations
and Peasant Poetry 30
Hot blood 30
London fields 34
The squawk of flattery 49
Good Old Chuckey 66
3. The Importance of Being Earnest: Manly Artisans
and Sincere Sages 76
Our own daily realities 76
Allyouwould wish a poor man to be 88
A backbone of personal experience 94
Missed opportunities 97
4. High, Flighty and Frolicsome: Mad Poets and
Moral Managers 102
Life sentences 102
Scraps of poetry 104
Prying and watching 117
Mischievous children 126
5. A Government Prison where Harmless People are
Trapped: Regency Poets and Victorian Asylums 130
Fight club 130
Boxer Byron 144
To Peterborough Station 158
Notes 164
Further Reading 187
Index 190
vii
Acknowledgements
I am grateful once again to Janet Todd, herself the author of a book on
Clare, for her encouragement and example as far as my own writing of
literary and cultural history is concerned. The pleasure of writing this
book has been mixed with great sadness at the untimely death of Roger
Pipe-Fowler, a close friend and an exemplary colleague who gave me
(and many others) so much good advice over the years. Past colleagues
who have influenced my work on literature and history include David
Aers, Ros Ballaster, Sarah Beckwith, David Lawton, George MacLennan
(who has written well on Clare and madness) and Philip O’Neill. For
this book I am also grateful to Roger Cooter and Tim Marshall, who
gave me some valuable help with medical histories, and to Robert Clark
for discussions of the literary history of the Regency period.
A number of those in what is becoming known as the Clare commu-
nity have helped me in matters great and small and I am very grateful
to them. I acknowledge individual debts to them and others in some of
the endnotes. It will be seen there that some Clare scholars are gener-
ous almost to a fault in sharing the fruits of their own labours.
Jan Fergus’s volume on Jane Austen in this series has been a model and
very often an inspiration. Other Austen specialists who have helped
me to understand this period better include Claudia L. Johnson and
Anne K. Mellor. Editors who have recently asked me write on the
Regency and early Victorian periods include Kate Campbell, Deidre
Lynch, Judy Simons and Frances Wilson. Journals such as Albion and
Literature and History have also kept me up to scratch with requests for
reviews of books about the Regency period.
The endnotes give details of the archives that I have visited and I need
to thank all those who have helped me with this material. In addition to
the Clare collections at Northampton and Peterborough as well as
archives in London, I have worked in libraries at Aberdeen, Chelmsford,
Lincoln, Manchester, Matlock, Sheffield, Stamford and York. The rest of
the research was done in the University Library at Cambridge which, as
always, provided an extremely supportive environment. I just wish, as
Clare once said about London, that we could creep a little closer to each
other. Perhaps we shall, although I suspect that I shall have to do all of
the creeping. Alex Noel-Tod, the subject specialist librarian at East
Anglia, has also been a help. I would like to thank my publishers and
ix
