Gentlemen and ladies came to see the poet’s cottage
Tom Paulin: Clare’s anti-pastoral, 19 February 2004
John Clare: A Biography
by Jonathan Bate.
Picador, 650 pp., £25, October 2003,0 330 37106 1 Show More
by Jonathan Bate.
Picador, 650 pp., £25, October 2003,
‘I Am’: The Selected Poetry of John Clare
edited by Jonathan Bate.
Farrar, Straus, 318 pp., $17, November 2003,0 374 52869 1 Show More
edited by Jonathan Bate.
Farrar, Straus, 318 pp., $17, November 2003,
John Clare, Politics and Poetry
by Alan Vardy.
Palgrave, 221 pp., £45, October 2003,0 333 96617 1 Show More
by Alan Vardy.
Palgrave, 221 pp., £45, October 2003,
John Clare Vol. V: Poems of the Middle Period 1822-37
edited by Eric Robinson, David Powell and P.M.S. Dawson.
Oxford, 822 pp., £105, January 2003,0 19 812386 8 Show More
edited by Eric Robinson, David Powell and P.M.S. Dawson.
Oxford, 822 pp., £105, January 2003,
“... the most literate people in their village: Parker Clare could certainly read, although his wife, Ann Stimson, did not know a single letter of the alphabet and, like many country people, regarded printed texts as a form of witchcraft. At this time, Bate notes, illiteratemeant not ‘unable to read’ but ‘ignorant of polite letters’. Clare and a twin ... ”
