John Clare in Context.

"Clare was in the first generation of poets to know . . . that human beings are part of an ecosystem. . . . Clare understood the definitive value of environment, context" (pp. 290, 291). So Marilyn Gaull in the final essay in this collection, and her words set the tone for the whole book. In recent years, more and more of John Clare's hitherto unpublished writings have become available in carefully edited texts, and it is therefore possible to extend literary-critical discussion of his work to include broader areas. This was the aim of Geoffrey Summerfield, who helped to revolutionize Clare studies in the 1960s, and originally planned the present book as a contribution to the Clare centenary of 1993. Unfortunately, Summerfield died while it was still in the planning stage. His editorial initiative has been carried to completion by Hugh Haughton and Adam Phillips.

As the two remark in their introduction, Summerfield hoped "to make Clare available for a diversity of interpretations and approaches" (p. 22). As a result, in addition to the expected considerations of him as romantic poet and dispossessed countryman, we encounter essays on his radical politics (forcefully argued by John Lucas), on his particular approach to botany (an excellent essay by Douglas …