"Ah! What a paradise begins with life, and what a wilderness the knowledge of the world discloses. Surely the garden of Eden was nothing more than our first parents entrance upon life, and the loss of it their knowledge of the world." - autobiographical fragment
John Clare
(John D. Clare; Kelsey Thornton,Editor)
John Clare : Selected Poetry and Prose
(Merryn Williams, Raymond Willians)
Presents Clare's poetry exactly as he wrote it, and includes selections from his `mad' poems as well as his earlier descriptions of birds, animals and village life.
John Clare in Context
(Hugh Haughton, Adam Phillips, Geoffrey Summerfield)
The marginalization of John Clare's poetry, despite renewed interest in Romanticism and the literature of madness, is still an enigma. This important collection of new critical essays provides a welcome reappraisal in the wake of Clare's bicentenary, and will be a landmark in the history of his reception. It includes chapters on landscape and botany, Clare's politics, his madness, Clare and the critics, and a remarkable essay by Seamus Heaney on Clare's importance as a poetic precursor.
