Ebook: John Clare: voice of freedom

John Clare (1793-1864), a visionary poety whoa lso worked as an agricultural laborer, was deeply affected by the Enclosure Movement, a series of Acts of Parliament which consolidated the old strip-farming systems into larger units and removed the people's rights to common land. In the process, families were driven out and forced to seek low-paid work in the new industrial towns with a few able to eke out an existence. As part of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions sweeping through England, this heralded the destruction of the countryside that John Clare loved and which inspired much of his poetry. Many of the issues that concerned Clare can be seen to relate directly to today's problems of poverty, inequality, and the environment.