Shepherd's Calendar

John Clare (1793-1864): Born the son of a thresher at Helpston, Northamptonshire, John Clare is a rural poet and story teller. He is a poet of spiritual originality, as compelling at his best as Crabbe and Wordsworth as a story teller in verse. He was an assiduous practitioner of the sonnet form at all periods of his poetic career. The sonnets he produced in the last few years before his institutionalisation in 1837, first at High Beech and then in Northampton General Asylum, are of particular interest, since he exploited the inherent brevity of the form to express a simultaneous precision of observation and starkness of vision that he rarely achieved either before or after. Tim Chilcott has maintained a life-time interest in English Romantic literature, particularly the work of John Clare, about whom he has written extensively. He has published widely on Clare and Romanticism, including 'A real world & doubting mind': a Critical Study of the Poetry of John Clare (University of Hull Press, 1985), John Clare: The Living Year 1841(Trent Editions, 1999) and A Publisher and His Circle: the life and work of John Taylor, Keats's Publisher (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972). A member of the John Clare Society since its inception in 1981, Chilcott has written a number of articles and reviews for its annual Journal. His other major research interest is literary translation, and his web-site devoted to translation can be accessed at www.tclt.org.uk. Formerly Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of Chichester, he is now retired. He has lived in Brighton for over 35 years.