Life Summary

John Clare, born in 1793 in Helpston, Northamptonshire, emerged from the soil of rural England as a self-taught poet whose verses captured the unadorned beauty of the natural world. Raised in poverty, he began laboring on farms at the age of seven, yet his innate poetic talent flourished, nourished by folk ballads and an early love for literature. His debut collection, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820), brought him fleeting fame and the patronage of literary circles. However, as industrialization encroached upon the countryside he cherished, Clare's mental health deteriorated. He spent his later years in an asylum, where he continued to write, producing poignant works like "I Am." Clare died in 1864, his legacy as a voice for the disenfranchised and the vanishing rural landscape enduring in his poetry.