Country Life in the Poetry of John Clare

This study delves into the world that shaped one of England’s most vivid rural poets, drawing a clear line between the sweeping agricultural changes of the eighteenth century and the verses he left behind. By tracing the rise of enclosure—when common fields were fenced off and redistributed among wealthy landowners—the author shows how the loss of shared lands fractured village life. The poet’s keen eye for the ordinary, from a lone sheep to a disappearing meadow, becomes a lens through which the broader social upheaval is examined.

Combining careful literary analysis with a concise economic history, the work reveals how small farmers, cottagers and laborers were pushed to the margins while new machinery and high rents reshaped the countryside. Readers hear the echo of those struggles in the poet’s language, his melancholy for a vanished way of life and his fierce affection for the land that survived. The thesis remains approachable, offering both poetry lovers and history buffs a vivid portrait of a community in transition.