John Clare Society homepage

The John Clare Society

The John Clare Society in Japan

ABOUT THE SOCIETY AND CLARE

The John Clare Society was founded in 1981 to promote a wider and deeper knowledge of this remarkable poet. It currently has about 550 members worldwide.

The Society publishes a quarterly Newsletter and a refereed Journal once a year (received at the end of the subscription year), as well as arranging exhibitions, day schools, poetry readings and conferences. We also have Clare books for sale and organise a summer festival in Helpston, which includes poetry readings, tours, stalls, talks, and live entertainment.

We are also a member of the Alliance of Literary Societies .

The Society is a registered charity (no. 1124846).

John Clare's life spanned one of the great ages of English poetry but, until about fifty years ago, few would have thought of putting his name with those of Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Browning and Tennyson.

Born in 1793, the son of humble and almost illiterate parents, Clare grew up in the Northamptonshire village of Helpston and made the surrounding countryside his world. His formal education, such as it was, ended when he was eleven years old, but this child of the 'unwearying eye' had a thirst for knowledge and became a model example of the self-taught man. As a poet of rural England he has few rivals.

From the moment his first publication - Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery - appeared, it was clear that England had a new and very original poet. Sadly, the public's enthusiasm did not last long and each new volume met with diminishing applause. Ill and in debt, he left Helpston for Northborough from where he was eventually removed to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he died in 1864.

To find out more about Clare’s writings, why not visit the John Clare Page, edited by Simon Kovesi (Oxford Brookes University).

What's New

· Go to the Events page for information on this year’s festival in July.

§ John Clare’s cottage in Helpston is now owned by the John Clare Trust, which will work closely with the John Clare Society and others to restore the site to how it would have been in the time of Clare and to establish it as an educational centre. Under a Heritage Lottery Award, the Trust has managed to gain a substantial amount of funding – but not enough to carry out the work they need to on the cottage. A stipulation of this type of award is that they have to part match the funding and so they continue to work to raise funds for the project. Anyone wishing to make donations to the cottage appeal should can visit their website for more detail, go to http://www.johnclaretrust.org/.

· See Sales page for sales items! Includes sales form for The Wood is Sweet.

§ The Clare weblog (or blog) is still running. Each day, a few lines of a Clare poem will be posted. To access this, go to http://www.johnclare.blogspot.com/ and to comment on a daily entry, click on the appropriate comment button and comment away. Nothing to join, although to add a name to an individual comment you have to register.

· We continue to gather information to produce a comprehensive bibliography of Clare pieces set to music. Click here to view the list so far. If you know of anything which is not on the list, or can bulk out the information there, please let us know.

· Check out the Events page for the latest events in the Clare Calendar.

These pages are maintained by Linda Curry and were last updated in June 2009.