"This book situates John Clare's long, prolific but often badly neglected literary life within the wider cultural histories of the Regency and earlier Victorian periods. The first half considers the construction of the Regency peasant-poet and pays particular attention to literary philanthropy by women.

It looks at how Clare performed this role on camp, kitschy stages such as the London Magazine and suggest that he was a much more self-consciously literary writer than is generally supposed; as well as being a very ambitious one. It also argues that he went out of fashion when urban and metropolitan Condition-of-England agendas started to dominate the scene. The second half recreates asylum culture in archival detail, contesting Michel Foucault's account of the birth of the asylum, and places Clare's performances as Regency boxers and Lord Byron within this bleak new world. Clare is seen throughout as a writer's writer: a survivor rather than a victim.

He has to experience the joy and pain of writing, no matter whether anybody was listening or not. If he was mad, then this was almost certainly produced by the very mad-doctors who claimed to be able to cure it."--BOOK JACKET.