author
Robert Bloomfield
1766–1823
Born into poverty and trained as a shoemaker, this self-taught English poet found lasting fame by turning everyday rural life into vivid, memorable verse. His best-known poem, The Farmer’s Boy, made him one of the most widely read laboring-class writers of his time.
6 Audiobooks
The Bird and Insects' Post Office
by Robert Bloomfield
May Day with the Muses
by Robert Bloomfield
Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs
by Robert Bloomfield
Wild Flowers; or, Pastoral and Local Poetry
by Robert Bloomfield
The Farmer's Boy: A Rural Poem
by Robert Bloomfield
The Banks of Wye: A Poem
by Robert Bloomfield
About the author
Robert Bloomfield was an English poet born in Honington, Suffolk, on December 3, 1766, and he died in Shefford, Bedfordshire, on August 19, 1823. Often described as a laboring-class or self-educated writer, he grew up in a poor family and was sent to London as a teenager to work as a shoemaker.
His breakthrough came with The Farmer’s Boy, a long poem that brought him sudden literary success around the turn of the nineteenth century. Readers admired the way he wrote about the countryside and working life with warmth, detail, and sympathy, drawing on lived experience rather than fashionable literary poses.
Although his fame faded after his lifetime, Bloomfield remains an important figure in English literature, especially in the tradition of working-class and rural poetry. His career is often remembered as a remarkable example of talent emerging from difficult circumstances, and his poems still attract readers interested in nature, village life, and the voices of ordinary people.