Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection

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.