A Cage Glass All Round: Dilettante Patrons and Literary Philanthropists

Abstract

As far as the reading public was concerned, Clare’s literary life began very early in 1820 with the publication in London of Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, by John Clare, a Northamptonshire Peasant. This volume, published by the progressive firm of Taylor and Hessey, which was already associated with John Keats’s poetry, was widely reviewed and eventually went into four editions. Clare went to London for about a week, meeting his publisher John Taylor and some of those such as Admiral Lord Radstock and Eliza Emmerson who appointed themselves as his patrons. He also met some of the literary celebrities attached to the camp, bohemian London Magazine. Ironically enough, this Northamptonshire Peasant was by adoption a Cockney: Cockney Clare. He was to join Thomas De Quincey, William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb as a regular contributor to the London. He visited poets’ corner at Westminster Abbey during this first visit to London. Would he ever be remembered there? The answer is not until 1989, which provides a snapshot of his literary life and its perceived marginality. Lord Byron got there first, as he usually did in Clare’s experience, but only just, this particular time not being commemorated until the 1960s.