I have been researching the village folk, with whom John Clare lived, for several years now and publishing my research in my essay series ‘John Clare’s Contemporaries’, so I loved this poetry collection. It focuses primarily on the lives of non-literary and non-literate people that Clare knew well; people who’ve tended to be marginalised in other collections and histories. Poems such as ‘To the memory of James Merrishaw a village schoolmaster’ and ‘To an infant sister in heaven’ explore his feelings for key figures in his life, while those about shepherds, travellers, Morris dancers, milkmaids, woodmen, nutters and the foddering boy give a flavour of the diversity of people he spent time with in his everyday life. 

The collection also highlights Clare’s deep empathy for the poverty and suffering of those around him. He is indignant on behalf of soldiers, beggars, emigrants, orphan, gypsies and all those who die for want of bread, leaving no question about who he sees as responsible for the suffering of the poor. Indeed, his social criticism is uncannily relevant to the present day, with such lines as ‘The rich man claims it [honesty]; but he often buys/Its substitute, that is not what it seems’ reminding the reader that less changes over the centuries, in terms of politics and inequity, than we might imagine.

My favourite section would have to be ‘Neighbour John’, and particularly ‘To My Cottage’, ‘Shepherd’s Hut’ and ‘The Shepherd Boy’. My great-great-great-great-grandfather was a shepherd in Helpston in the 1820s, living in Clare Cottage with his young family, alongside the Clares. I feel privileged to get an insight into their home and lifestyle through Clare’s poetry, and I love to think of my 3x great-grandfather, Henry Housden, when Clare writes of the lad leaning ‘by the pebbled brooks’ and ‘telling glad stories to his dog’. Henry would have been 15 (the same age as Anna Maria, the poet’s oldest daughter) in 1835, the year in which Clare wrote ‘The Shepherd Boy’. 

Clare’s People is ideal for anyone new to Clare’s poetry and for those who’d like to learn more about the villagers and other local folk he knew.

Nic Wilson is a writer, editor & Guardian Country Diarist based in North Hertfordshire. Her nature memoir, Land Beneath the Waves, was published by Summersdale in 2025. She works for BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine, specialising in wildlife & wild plants.

Copies of Clare’s People are available from the Publications and Merchandise Officer for £12. (Please visit the John Clare Society shop for more details on how to order.)