author
Robert Bloomfield
1766–1823
A shoemaker-poet from rural Suffolk, he turned everyday farm work and country life into verse that struck a chord with a wide English readership. His best-known poem, The Farmer’s Boy, brought him sudden fame and made him one of the notable labouring-class poets of his time.
6 Audiobooks
The Bird and Insects' Post Office
by Robert Bloomfield
May Day with the Muses
by Robert Bloomfield
Wild Flowers; or, Pastoral and Local Poetry
by Robert Bloomfield
The Banks of Wye: A Poem
by Robert Bloomfield
The Farmer's Boy: A Rural Poem
by Robert Bloomfield
Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs
by Robert Bloomfield
About the author
Born in Honington, Suffolk, in 1766, Robert Bloomfield came from a poor family and had little formal schooling. As a boy he worked in agricultural settings before moving to London, where he learned and practiced shoemaking. That background shaped the clear, observant way he wrote about labor, landscape, and ordinary rural experience.
Bloomfield became widely known after the publication of The Farmer’s Boy in 1800. Readers were drawn to its detailed picture of country life, and his success briefly made him a literary celebrity. He went on to publish other poems as well, and his work is still valued for the place it holds among self-taught and labouring-class writers of the period.
Although his popularity faded and his later years were marked by financial hardship, Bloomfield’s writing continued to be remembered by later readers and poets. He died in Shefford, Bedfordshire, in 1823, leaving behind a body of work that preserves the textures of rural English life with unusual warmth and directness.