Reading John Clare: a personal choice

Offering a reading list for the generality of John Clare’s readers presents a challenge: who to aim for and to what level of knowledge. What is presented here represents one person’s selection. Someone who is not a Clare scholar, but who has been reading Clare for many years. All items remain a basic reference point. It is hoped that personal reading choices will be rotated and archived.
Dr Mike Mecham, Chair, John Clare Society

Introductory texts

Kelsey Thorton – The Everyman John Clare Selection (1997).
A short, one hundred-page, selection, both engaging and representative of Clare’s poetical range, with a thoughtful introduction and chronology.

Paul Farley, John Clare (Faber’s ‘Poet to Poet’ series, 2007)
A good, un-themed, selection which offers few surprises but a valuable personal introduction. Farley, a poet himself, is a long-time admirer of John Clare.

Geoffrey Summerfield, John Clare, Selected Poetry (1990)
The turn-to selection for many is now out of print but readily available online at a low price. Not only does it have a generous selection of Clare’s poetry, but it is thematically structured with perceptive short introductions to each theme.

Eric Robinson and David Powell, John Clare, Major Works (2004 edition)
For the reader who wishes to delve more deeply and widely into John Clare’s work, both poetry and prose, this edition by the main editors of the towering Oxford/Clarendon transcriptions is ideal. It is a bargain in terms of both content and price.

John Clare, The Shepherd’s Callendar
This was the third collection published in 1827 during Clare’s lifetime. It is a fascinating social history account of rural life and customs in the 19^th century; it also offers the reader a monthly companion alongside Clare during the twelve months of the year. A scanned copy of the original first edition can be found in the ‘Writings’ section of this website. Elsewhere Tim Chilcott’s 2006 dual edition with the original manuscript set alongside the published version offers the reader much additional text for each month.

John Clare Society published selections
Together, the three companion selections published by the John Clare Society – The Wood Is Sweet (2005), This Happy Spirit (2013) and Clare’s People (2025) – offer a broad range of Clare’s poetry, and some prose, across the natural world, his loves and losses, and the people who inhabited his world. All reflect Clare’s humanity alongside his acute observation. They are available to purchase through the Society’s shop.

Autobiography

Eric Robinson and David Powell, John Clare By Himself (2002 edition)
We are blessed with a vast collection of prose writing and letters Clare left on a variety of subjects, including natural history. He also scribbled journals and some autobiographical writings. They are invariably in the uncorrected form in which Clare originally wrote them in. But they provide an invaluable source for those readers who want to explore Clare’s thinking when he was writing his extensive poetry. This collection remains at a reasonable price.

Biography

Jonathan Bate, John Clare, A Biography (2008)
While biographies have appeared intermittently since the year after his death (by Frederick Martin), the most substantive and recent one is Jonathan Bate’s. Running to some 650 pages, it contains a huge amount of detail.

John Lucas, John Clare (1994)
This much shorter introduction to John Clare and his life by a recognized authority on the poet is still in print and is available online, both new and used at a modest price.

Academic studies

There is an extensive and rich catalogue of scholarly research and studies on a wide range of aspects of Clare’s life and writing. By far the most accessible collection is in the pages of the John Clare Society Journal. Apart from the most recent issues, all since the first issue in 1981 are freely available to read on the Journal pages of this website. They are accompanied by an invaluable index by Professor John Goodrich. John Clare Society Journal Archive.