author
Nathaniel Bloomfield
1759–1831
A self-taught English laboring-class poet, he wrote about war, rural life, and social change with directness and feeling. His small body of published work offers a vivid glimpse of village England at the turn of the nineteenth century.
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About the author
Born in Honington, Suffolk, in 1759, he was one of the older brothers of the better-known poet Robert Bloomfield. Like Robert, he came from a working family and is remembered as part of the tradition of laboring-class writers whose poetry grew out of everyday experience rather than formal literary training.
His best-known book, An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, appeared in 1803 with support from Capel Lofft. The poems range from public themes such as war to local and deeply felt subjects tied to village life, including the changing landscape of Honington.
Modern reference sources describe him as an English working-class poet, and his surviving reputation rests mainly on that 1803 collection and on his connection to the Bloomfield family of writers. He died in 1831.