A Champion for the Poor : Political Verse and Prose

This collection of poems and prose, which includes "The Parish", in a new and corrected text, "The Hue and Cry" and "The Summons" reveal John Clare's reactions to events of the time and the political and social conditions. Such writings illuminate the poetry and help enhance our sense of Clare and his attitudes to the world of his day.

A Champion for the Poor brings together for the first time John Clare's longest poem, The Parish - in a new and corrected text - and his forceful satires 'The Hue & Cry' and 'The Summons'. Some previously unpublished poems are included, too. There are also essays, letters and fragments - advice to his children, reflections on Enclosure, observations of social custom and social ill - which illuminate the poems and enhance our sense of Clare and his attitudes to the political and social conditions and events of his age. The Introduction evokes the context of Clare's writings and the difficulties he faced as a labourer voicing the concerns of his class at a time when such matters were regarded as the exclusive province of the educated and propertied classes. Notes and a glossary of unfamiliar words are included. Readers can at last assess a neglected aspect of Clare's work.