John Clare

Lunatic, lover, poet: this is the definitive biography of John Clare. John Clare was a great Romantic poet, with a name to rival that of Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth or Shelley, and a life that was possibly the most extraordinary, and certainly the most moving, of them all. From rural Northamptonshire to literary London, from first love to delusions, depression and incarceration, Clare was haunted by ghosts from the past. In this, the first major biography of Clare, Jonathan Bate explores both the man and his madness, his work and his writing - poems, letters, even part of an autobiography - all of which show a mind plagued by demons and doubts, constantly questioning issues of identity, memory and, above all, loss. Jonathan Bate is Professor of English Literature in the University of Oxford and on the Board of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is the editor of the highly acclaimed RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works (Macmillan) and the author of many books, including John Clare: A Biography (Picador), which was short-listed for seven prizes and won Britain's two oldest literary awards, the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Prize. Professor Bate has lectured on Shakespeare throughout the world and has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and the University of California. He was made CBE in the Queen's 80th birthday honours, for his services to literature and higher education.