John Clare

Born in Helpston, Northamptonshire, on July 13, 1793, he was the son of a farm labourer and grew up with little formal schooling. Even so, he became a gifted poet whose writing drew closely on the language, wildlife, and working life of the English countryside.

He first found success in the early 1820s, and readers were struck by how freshly and precisely he wrote about nature. Poems such as I Am helped secure his lasting reputation, and his work is now widely valued as one of the most distinctive voices of the 19th century.

His later life was marked by severe mental illness, and he spent many years in asylums before his death on May 20, 1864. Today, he is remembered not only as an important Romantic poet, but also as a powerful witness to rural life and environmental change.